By Emerald Briggs
Kicking off the week strong, we had the Newfound Fun Run for Homecoming on Monday. Although I’m sure no one thinks our course is too fun, we try to make the environment fun with costumes and fun prizes. The top girl and boy win a bag of apples. This year, these were picked by the boys’ team during their bonding activity on Saturday at the Cardigan Mountain Orchard. In past years, second place won a bear head, but our coaches changed the bear prize this year for the best costume on either side. One of our own, Reece Cutting, won the bear head for running in her pickle costume. She also earned a jar of pickles because Coach LaPlume made a bet with her that she wouldn’t be able to finish in the costume. She pushed through and did it. On the boy’s side, Bryce Palmer won for running in a tiger costume. Contributing to the fun was Mike Smith finally reuniting with Mike LaPlume and the girls snapping another heart picture with them. Disappointingly, Smith vanished almost as soon as he appeared.
On the running side of things, Newfound swept both races with Emerald and Colin winning and Ceili and Wyatt coming in second. The girls had 5 runners in the top 10. Even though this meet isn’t officially scored, I would like to mention that the girls would have won with 17 points which was a shocker to me.
Tuesday was an easy 30-40 minute run with strides and a “Black Bear” workout at the end. On Wednesday, LaPlume once again subjected us to the grass track for 300m cruise intervals. This time, we had 10-14 of them on our plate. After crushing those, the team headed to the weight room to get buff with Coach Kendra. Thursday was a short pre-meet shrine run. After this run, the team got to work on our lip sync for homecoming. Although many other sports teams had been working on this for days, practicing their choreography to a tee, for some reason cross country decided to wait until the last minute. In just around an hour, we planned choreography, outfits, and everything else needed for the next day’s battle.
Friday was a busy day for us. First, we had to tackle the sports lip sync. The lip sync and homecoming theme was “There’s No Place Like Homecoming”, so we stuck to a Wizard of Oz theme. Cross country was up first and we almost missed a key piece, our coach’s dog, Max. Max was supposed to kick off the whole thing, but due to some miscommunication, almost missed the start. Funny enough, that would match up with our first song clip, “No one told you when to run. You missed the starting gun” from Time by Pink Floyd. After an amazing mess of lip-syncing and dancing, the team hurried off stage and waited for the rest of the teams to perform. At last, we found out that we got 3rd which was a shock to many since the whole performance was super last minute. Also, last year we tied for last place so this was a great improvement.
After school, it was time for the team to get locked in for Moonlight Madness. Once we arrived at the fairgrounds, the girls reunited with our friends from Mascenic and Conant. LaPlume and Smith got back together, resulting in another heart pic (2 in one week might be a record!). Following getting geared up with light-up scrunchies, glow sticks, and pickle tattoos, the girls set out for the starting line. During the race, some of the girls and boys saw a shooting star which was a super cool addition to the night. While I’m not too sure of everyone’s previous pr, I know that the majority of the girls and boys pr’d and ran amazingly that night! Emerald and Ceili came in 6th and 7th respectively. The girls placed 1st overall and were stoked. After the race, we rewarded ourselves with our annual Moonlight Crumbl cookies, sharing them with many others as well. The boys all ran good races as well, placing a solid 9th out of 12. Colin got 4th in a great time. Wyatt ran sub 19 for the first time (18:50 to be exact) which now means that he gets to buzz LaPlume’s hair off according to a previous deal between the two. While I’m not speaking for everyone, I for sure know that I am not looking forward to “BaldPlume”. Overall, the night was a huge success and super fun.
Even though many of us went to bed well after 11 pm that Friday night, we had to wake up early on Saturday to help out at the NH Marathon in Bristol that morning. The team helped out with the kid’s one-mile race, either running with the kids or cheering them on throughout the course. After the kid’s race, a lot of the team stayed to either cheer on the racers, do their long run, or both. Hopefully, the kid racers stick with it and join the high school team one day!
