The Sedona Red Rock High School cross country team traveled to its first meet on Saturday, Aug. 30, at Buffalo Park in Flagstaff.

During their practice on Aug. 26, coach Cody McKessen said there are five athletes on the team, with two more to join after submitting their medical records to the school. The middle school has seven athletes already.

“For middle schoolers, [we] get them to fall in love with the sport,” McKessen said. “With high schoolers, it’s still fun, but it’s more ‘all right, we’re here to train hard and show everyone how hard we train and compete.’”

The team will often run about 40 to 50 miles a week during their practices, he said, and they practice six days a week.

“Saturdays will either be an on-your-own practice, or usually we have a meet, which is three miles,” he said. “But they’re understanding there’s a practice after the meet. … What other sport do you do that? You go do your football game and then have a little football game after.”

“We don’t even have a technical team to qualify as a team for girls,” senior Aubrie Doyle said. “You need five people, we only have two. So, we just race individually.”

Personal goals for each of the students varies, but the meets for cross country are always 5 kilometers or 3.2 miles.

Doyle, who’s starting her sixth year on the team, said she’d like to see times in the 20 minutes range.

“After practices we always do something extra, whether that be strength training or column striders, just like kind of sprints in a way,” she said.

Ryan Pfaff, also a senior, is beginning his second season on the team.

“I think I want to try to get less than 25 minutes,” he said. “5K time, I think my best time last year was like 32 or 33 something.”

But this weekend, because it’s so early in the season, Pfaff would be happy with a time less than 30 minutes.

Despite the small team, there are still athletes who aren’t graduating this year and planning on continuing with the sport.

Juni Spielman is a freshman and last year was her first running cross country.

“I had a really good season and just fell in love with the sport,” she said. Her goals are mainly to have fun and see how well she can run full 5Ks.

Spielman placed 14th in the 5,000 Meters Summit race with a time of 22 minutes 18.7 seconds.

Junior Sunny Flores is also starting his second year on the team.

“I think [the season] started off pretty positive,” he said. “It started off a little bit hard, but I’m warming up to it. I haven’t run in a while.”

Flores said he would run two laps or so a few times a week over the summer, and practice ramping up for the season makes him excited to keep going.

The next scheduled meet is the Fountain Hills Invitational on Saturday, Sept. 13.