Monroe High Cross Country Team prepares for regionals

The Monroe High Cross Country Team had its pre-regional meet in Bedford Saturday morning. Since both the boys and girls placed fourth overall, they will both be going to regionals next week.

The girls had a score of 113. Ann Arbor Pioneer had a score of 31. The boys had a score of 97 compared to first place’s 27.

The team’s totals, which are all the runners’ times added together, were 1:44:51 for the girls and 1:27:39. Only a few minutes were between each team.

Both Luke Butler and Viktoria Bloniarz placed in the top five for their races. They are a big part of the team going to regionals.

Butler said he is glad that his coach chose to train him so well for this race and at the end of this season.

“The way that coach had us train, it definitely helped us toward the end of the year,” said Butler.

Bloniarz said she is glad that she can run for the first time at regionals and is going to push to improve for regionals just like the rest of the team.

“It feels great. It’s my first year making it to regionals, so I’m just super proud of everyone and all of our hard work that we’ve been training for this season,” said Bloniarz. “I’m just going to keep training for my goal. I know our team will do the same and push through.” 

The girls coach, Linda Chmiel, and boys coach, Justin Heck, both said there were some things they could improve on and that they would keep training as competition starts to elevate.

“There are some spots we could improve, but we did what we needed to do,” Heck said. “A lot of it is just continue training. It starts ramping up in competition so we’ll make sure they’re ready for that.”