At the beginning of the season, Ben Scamihorn was certainly hopeful that the Sedona Red Rock High School cross country team would experience some success in 2019. But the main goal of the first-year coach and teacher at SRRHS was to build a program in 2019. To do that, he needed numbers, something that had been an issue for the Scorpions in the past.
With the season underway, the program has the numbers that Scamihorn was looking for. Between the boys and girls, the SRRHS cross country team has roughly 20 participants.
“I knew I would have more kids than they had last year; I didn’t know I would have this many,” Scamihorn said. “That’s awesome. You need numbers to have a team.”
“A lot of them have never ran competitively before,” the coach added. “It’s cool to see kids across all different skill levels becoming a family day by day. It’s also cool to see that they’re not just running to get in shape anymore. They’re becoming real runners.”
Two runners who have become “real” runners this season are freshmen Ariel Prieto and Carlos Villegas. Prieto joined the team hoping largely to get into shape for basketball, while Villegas did the same with soccer. But in the opening two meets, those two, along with sophomore Brandon Arias, were the top runners on the boys team. Scamihorn was additionally pleased with the performance of freshman Diego Arizmendi, whose time in the team’s second meet of the season in Flagstaff was more than three minutes better than the opener in Payson.
On the girls’ side, freshman Bridget Nichols, sophomore Hannah Lanchbury and senior Cheyenne Javey have logged some of the top times. The coach also lauded the improvements of seniors Krushi Bhakta and Ariana Landaverde. The team is nearly entirely different this year than it was a season ago. Many of the runners are new to the Scorpions. Plenty of them are completely new to the sport.
While most people associated with 2019’s team can’t compare it to past seasons, Javey can. She is in her third year running cross country and has seen rather notable differences compared to the last two years.
“We’ve done more than any other year,” Javey said. “We’ve been pushed a lot more. Previous years we’ve had really small teams and not too experienced coaches, I guess you can say. This year our coach knows a lot more and is pushing us a lot.”
Another runner with prior experience with the SRRHS cross country team is sophomore Jack Pierce. He, too, has seen vast improvements and thinks that the team has the potential to do big things through the season.
“I think we can maybe go to state,” Pierce said, “We’re doing pretty good. I think a lot of people are really pushing themselves and improving.”
Scamihorn noted that while state is a possibility for some individuals, it’s more of a longshot for the team as a whole. More realistically, he hopes to see the Scorpions finish in the middle of the pack at sectionals this year with an eye towards state in future seasons.
Still, he’s been remarkably pleased with the progress in the early season. In the second meet of the season, every runner on the team knocked at least a minute off of his or her time from the first meet. Scamihorn attributes that to a strong work ethic among the runners.
“Definitely their hard work and their willingness to listen to me,” he said. “I’m a new coach but they do what I say really without questioning, which is important. I think that’s key to their success, as well. If they put in the work, they’re going to get better. They’re putting in the work.”
Michael Dixon can be reached at 282-7795 ext 131 or email to mdixon@larsonnewspapers.com
