Horizon girls cross country breaks through, wins first meet of the season

After sixth-, fourth-, second- and two third-place team finishes to start the 2024 season, the Horizon High Hawks girls cross-country team, by most measures, was having a stellar run during the regular season. 

That is, until you compare them to the Horizon boys team, which started the regular season winning five consecutive meets. 

Anthony Barnes, coach of both the girls’ and boys’ teams at Horizon, didn’t understand the discrepancy. It’s not like his boys team is much more talented or determined, so why weren’t the girls finishing races like the boys and claiming wins? 

Barnes was determined to find out, so he held a team meeting and wasn’t leaving until he learned  what he could do better as a coach.

“At first, they didn’t want to share anything with me, any feedback, so I basically said, ‘No, we’re not leaving practice until you all tell me what I can do better to help you,’” Barnes said. “I wanted them to understand that their perspective was that important to me, to this team and that it’s OK to tell me that I needed to coach them differently. I wasn’t going to freak out and get mad. I was just literally trying to help them achieve their goals.” 

The two sides made a breakthrough during that meeting and agreed on a couple of key changes leading up to the Hawks’ latest meet, the Harmony Longhorn Invitational. 

“They were sincerely frustrated, but not mad at me, is a good way to phrase it,” Barnes said. “I basically told them that I believe and trust them and asked how I could do better. And they came up with some ideas and suggestions regarding adding more variety to our training to make it less monotonous or mundane, and I basically applied that thought process.”

As a result, Horizon won its first team meet of the season, with a historic showing. The Hawks established a school record time as a team of 107:06.25 — almost two minutes faster than the mark set in 2023. 

On the individual front, the Hawks were led by sophomore Abigayle White, who claimed the top spot in the individual portion of the meet with a time of 19:19.08, while Joslyn Armstrong finished seventh after posting a personal-best time of 20:38.99. Maryn Whitesell finished ninth with a time of 21:23.33, and Madelyn Schwarzmueller finished 15th with a time of 22:04.26. 

However, if you ask Barnes, the breakthrough his runners felt on the course was not because of the updated training regimen. Instead, it was all about the trust they developed in Barnes and one another, as well as the ownership the group took of the program. 

“Obviously, we changed a couple of workouts after our meeting,” Barnes said. “We still did the same things, just in a slightly different variation, but it was their attitudes and their effort that was the difference, in my opinion. There was definitely an improvement as a team overall because I feel like they have a bigger sense of ownership, knowing they can trust me to listen to them.” 

Barnes knows this win was a big moment for his team, as they ramp up for the postseason. However, he is cautioning himself and his runners to not let this moment end here but instead to keep the momentum going. 

“We’re not sure if these small changes are enough to keep the wins coming,” Barnes said. “We hope we keep winning, so we’ll continue to do some things that hopefully help that happen, but what is more important for us to maintain is that trust we’ve built. Obviously, there’s more trust now after this experience — which I think is the essence of all of sports, when the athletes have a feeling of ownership and say … they’re more bought in, they’re more trusting. Hopefully, that’s what’s happening with us and everything continues to get better as it did this past meet.”