Published: November 07, 2009 12:41 am      

New Waverly cross country ready for regional meet

Last week, the New Waverly cross country made some history when both the boys’ and girls’ team qualified for the region meet for the first time after finishing in third place.

New Waverly hopes to take the next step when they run in the Class 2A Region III meet today at Lone Star College in Humble.

“It’s going to be tough,” New Waverly head coach Esteban Pecina said Friday. “We’ve got a really tough region. It should be a fast race. We’ll see how it goes.

The cross country team will have a different kind of race than what they faced last week in Anderson, which had many hills. Today’s race will be mainly a flat course, which Pecina thinks bodes well for his runners.

“We’ve been running up and down hills a lot lately,” the coach said. “Hopefully that will help as we run a flat course tomorrow.

“We’ve done a lot of speed work this week on the track to prepare.”

The girls team, composed of Ashlyn Jackson, Whitney McCullough, Myeisha Williams, Kayla Williams, Alena Salinas and Ariel Ballew, will run its two-mile race at 10 a.m.

Jeffrey Currie, Eric Koonce, Clint Brown, Casey Jackson, Ryan Reyes and Zane Jackson comprise the boys team, which will run the 5K (3.1 mile) race at approximately 10:20 a.m.