Every year Nike hosts a cross country meet held in Terre Haute, Indiana. This year the meet is being held on Saturday, Oct. 5. The Nike XC Town Twilight is an invitational meet that hosts schools from all around the midwest, not just from Indiana.
Last season Center Grove boys finished 25th out of 35 teams. This weekend the team is looking to have a stronger finish in the race.
“It is a national cross country meet, so multiple schools from around the country compete,” sophomore Jayden Salo said. “You show off your abilities around college coaches that come to watch the meet. The course was very dark outside because we run in the night, so you have to watch where you are going very closely. After the race they shot fireworks up in the air, which was a cool experience.”
Although the Center Grove boys team has run in the race many times before, this year is the first year that the girls from Center Grove get the opportunity to compete in the Nike Twilight meet. With the shift of the county meet to earlier in the season, the girls team was able to add this meet to the schedule.
“I’m obviously going to try my best and go for a PR,” junior Andra Veleta said. “But I’m just excited to feel or to see what it feels like to race in an environment with a big group of girls. By 9:30 it’s going to be completely dark and the entire course is going to be lit up. It’s not a looped course so it’s the entire three miles.”
Coach Wesley Dodson made a weekly workout plan for the girls team that is built to train for their first opportunity to run in the Nike Invitational race.
“We do the same kind of weekly workout routine every single week. So this week we took it easy on the easy days and went hard on the hard days. Wednesday we had a really great workout and put us in a good place to race well on Saturday,” Veleta said. “This is more of a fun meet and we’re kind of focused more on sectionals, regionals and advancing to state this year. Our coach told us a few days ago at practice [that] our goals should be that we beat our state preview time, which we also ran at the Lavern Gibson course. But I’m really nervous about this meet because our race has around 570 girls in it, which is way more than any race our team has run before.”
Despite the stakes associated with the race, runners like Salo will look to overcome the nerves and take away unique experiences from the night-time race.
“It was a little nerve wracking last year when I ran because being a freshman in a national race made it a little scary,” Salo said. “It ended up being really fun with spectators cheering me on around the course. It was a fun experience because it was far different from the usual races we run for school.”
