With the state meet a month away, the Manual cross-country team is increasing the strenuousness of their four-times-weekly practices at assorted parks in hopes of bringing home a trophy.

The Lexington Catholic Invitational, which will take place this Saturday on the state meet course, is the last regular season meet. Afterwards are the County Championship, Regionals, and finally the state meet on November 12.

“We have been maintaining our hill work but have also started to do workouts with speed and turnover,”  Varsity girls’ runner Christina Rucinski (10) said. Turnover is the amount of steps taken per minute.

“We’ve been training a lot harder. Everyone wants to overcome some disappointing finishes lately, so we all took it up a notch,” Joseph DeMarco (11), a member of both the JV and Varsity boy’s teams, said.

Rucinski said that the girls’ team aims to win. “We have a few teams that are up there with us and Assumption is very strong this year, but I think we can pull it off.”

“Five of our runners have to run a low enough time [in order to win a trophy at state],” JV boys’ runner Ezekiel Smith (10) said.

“We’ll have some good competition, so it’ll be interesting to see how we do,” Smith said.

A sophomore CMA student who is a member of both Key Club and the field hockey team.