Grady’s cross country teams are back in a familiar place: the Georgia state cross country rankings.
Entering its second weekend meet of the year, the Aubrae Gunderson Invitational, the boys team was ranked 6th and the girls team was 11th in Class AAAA.
At the Gunderson meet, the girls finished second behind North Hall, led by senior Gracie Griffith’s second place time of 21:19, freshman Anna Tischer’s 21:52 sixth place time and Meredith Fossitt’s fourteenth place finish in 22:57.
With a team numbering nearly 80 runners, and some involved in other extracurricular activities, participation is a juggling act. The athletes are still committed and understand what’s expected, said Jeff Cramer, Grady’s cross country coach of 17 years. Cramer’s coaching style centers around teamwork, commitment and communication, he said.
“Our agreement is if you’re not going to practice, you either send an email or send a message with somebody to let me know where you are,” Cramer said. “We’ve gotten the message across that when you join a team, whatever the team is, you make a commitment to that group, and you can’t just fail to show up.”
Athletes say Cramer’s dedication to the team is evident.
“He puts his heart into cross country and that makes us want to do well and take it seriously,” freshman Selena Kleber said.
Cramer’s emphasis on teamwork is the reason the team uses small running groups based on ability during practice.
Cramer believes working together directly affects the outcomes at meets.
“The thing that I want to continue to grow is the concept of what it means to be a team, what it means to work together, what it means to have a goal,” Cramer said. “In soccer, if you’re not willing to pass the ball, you can’t win. If you don’t play your position and stay in your position, you can’t win.”
For new members of the team, this philosophy makes it easier to make friends.
“It’s not like a sport that you dread to do because it doesn’t even feel like you’re running, you just have fun talking with the people on the team,” Kleber said.
The team held summer practices three times a week beginning in June, with official practices beginning Aug. 1, six times a week. The runners average five to six miles per practice.
“I keep a record of everyone’s attendance every day, regardless of whether it’s optional,” Cramer said. “I require that they have 15 official practices before they can run in a meet.” In an effort to be more prepared for the meets, the team has been running time trials at practices.
“The time trials aren’t an effort to beat each other, it’s just to get some feel for who we have on the team, who are going to be your scorers and just some idea of how we stack up against previous years,” Cramer said. “I think we’re much stronger this year than we were last year.”
Nearly every Wednesday during the season, the team has system-wide APS meets at Grant Park. Grady uses the meets as an extra practice during the week. There are three invitational meets that affect the ranking of the team. Grady’s boys placed 10th in the team’s first invitational meet at Marist on Sept.12. The girls placed 17th.
“We recently found out that we were ranked 6th in AAAA which is really exciting for us because we’ve never been a highly ranked team [in recent seasons],” Lepik said. “It’s nice to get some recognition because we ran so well at the Marist meet. It’s nice to see that Georgia high school sports is noticing us and how we’ve improved.”
Grady won a boys cross country state championship in 1977 and the team has state runner-up finishes in 2004 and 2005. The girls team has two 4th place state finishes in 2003 and 2004. The girls finished 6th in the state meet in 2012.
The team is hoping it can improve its performance at the region and state meets this year. Last season, the girls finished 10th at state and the boys placed 15th.
“Last year’s finish at state was a bit of a letdown; we thought we could go top 6 with [both the girls and boys teams] and the groups got separated and got hung up in the pack,” Cramer said.
