wwu cross country

November 5: I am in between. It's been hard for me to see the space I fit into as a place to be. In the years I ran for western, it was always that I was between the depth of the pack and trying to catch up to the lead. Year after year it was like this. It was like everyone excelled at the same rate, and we were all stuck in our positions. Watching the team now, it's similar if it's not the same. There's too much space between the same places. Part of me thinks it's because one doesn't ask two to step up to her. And two doesn't ask three to step up to her, because everyone is used to being in their place and they don't, at least outwardly, want to share the tension and praise, the pride in the place. But they want each other to do well. But they can do well independently. But they're stuck. And it's because we put ourselves there. And it's because other people let us stay there. And maybe it's because there's negativity towards change in the order.

I started thinking about this last year, when a teammate, danielle, began to move up. And I was eager for her to keep moving up and up until she was where I was. But I didn't feel like it was my place to tell her to (why?). So I hoped. But the gap between couldn't close. And I wonder if it's because that was all we knew to do: remain separate, remain three and then four, instead of threefour. And as long as I saw her moving forward, I was encouraged to. A perpetual gap encouraged by the desire to maintain place, because we rank our progress in placement, and if someone who is behind us progresses past us, we have two options: 1. take a blow to ego, or 2. be encouraged to move up with them.

The western women's cross country team has made such large steps, with some back steps. We went from walking up hills just a few years ago, to running cleator, to making it to nationals, to bonding as a body where each of us needed one another, where we enjoyed each other, where we sat in each other's rooms picking out dresses and heels to celebrate nationals. There was faith, and we didn't need to worry about each other and we knew the long slow training would provide a peak. There was so much trust, and there was erik bies and there was this biting need to work hard for one another. I found all of this beautiful. But there were many times when I thought we could be a better body, where we could be more dedicated as limbs and breath.

November 5: the team gets ready, mostly separate. It's almost time to find out who will make the top 7. Everyone goes to the gnac banquet, and I go in my new place, in my new position, which is an interesting but beautiful one. I dress for the difference. No more heels & short dresses to showcase the cultivation of muscles I'd worked months for. Now it's about them. So I wear brass pants. The food is awful, I'm sorry. I wanted the team to eat only flavorful, healthy, sustaining food. The boys sit at the opposite corner of the room. It seems like the beautiful thing we'd worked towards, the unit, is becoming okay with separation.

At the team meeting, there's still that familiar distilled excitement. That unspoken need. That almost, but not quite need to say something really important, and its hardly ever said. And secretly, again, in my heart I'm saying, "step up, fill gaps, you can if you let yourself." And there's a dull hoo-rah and a dull good luck. But then, as everyone begins to move out of the room, one person says it, "I just wanted to say that don't you guys know we could win this? It isn't just the boys," which saves everything.

For the top seven I want seven not to feel like seven, because then she might be okay with running last for the team. And I don't want six to feel like six, nor five as five, four as four, three as three, two as two, one as one. I want a teammate to demand that her teammates step up, even if deep down she doesn't believe they will, because a sentence of encouragement from the right person can be the very thing to make a person make a move. And it's all about movement. A good team should be interchangeable, or willing, or bold enough to accept it.