Eagles take flight for best season
Since its inaugural season in 2017, the Eupora cross country team has been steadily climbing and breaking records year by year.
Five years in, this season was the best in school history.
Coach Randee Jernigan has been with the program from the start and has seen each runner consistently improve from year to year. This year the boys team finished second in the state at the state championship meet which was the highest finish in school history. This came just four years after the team finished dead last in the meet out of 20 teams.
“I knew what we had coming back,” Jernigan said. “We were going to be solid. The leadership of our team is fantastic. It just seems like every meet we were setting personal records. Last year in the Eagle Claw, we had one player with a personal record and this year we had 30. My boys just kept moving up that scale.”
What makes this year’s feats all the more impressive is that since COVID-19 hit last year, the state has been selective on the teams that make the meet meaning that teams have to qualify. Eupora’s girls finished ninth in the state out of 20 teams despite having much youth with every runner sophomores or younger.
There is plenty of youth on this year’s boys squad as well, but the Eagles led by a very experienced runner and one of the best in the state in John Thomas Frank. Last week, Frank was the only player out of the five runners that didn’t set a new personal best in the meet, but he finished with an impressive time of 18:07 in the championship, which gave him the second place medal behind a runner from Walnut.
Eupora finished second behind that Walnut team but beat out some great squads like New Site, Myrtle and East Union, which it had been battling all season long.
“I knew going in that it was going to be really tight,” Jernigan said. “They announced the top eight and they work backwards. I heard Myrtle was fifth or sixth and then you realized your name isn’t being called. When I heard New Site being called for number three, I started jumping around a little bit. You hear your boys called number two and that moment was so special.”
Other high finishers in the boys championship were sophomores Woods Mitchell and Joseph Rollins, who finished 11th and 16th respectively. Jernigan had a goal of winning two trophies at events this year, but the team overshot that with 11 wins.