Fresh Energy Drives Canes Cross Country
By Ashleigh Young
HurricaneSports.com
CORAL GABLES, Fla. – Ten days. One week and three days. 240 hours.
Ten days is all assistant cross country coach Cody Halsey has had to train the University of Miami cross country team before its first race of the season. What would be concerning or nerve-wracking to some, Halsey takes in full stride and welcomes with her charismatic personality on the course.
“I’m really excited to be here and get this season going with Miami,” Halsey said. “I think everyone, including myself, is just ready to get going. I give off a lot of energy and they soak that up and I think it’s what this team needed and craved.”
The Hurricanes begin the 2019 season at the sixth annual FAU Invitational on Aug. 30 at the South County Regional Park in Boca Raton, Fla. Miami will feature seven men and eight women, including returners Ryley Howard, Emma Langlois, Matthew Wiefels and Dylan Sykes, four athletes whom Halsey has seen step into a leadership role early this season.
“On the women’s side, Emma and Riley have done a really great job of getting everyone together as a group and making sure everyone knows how things are done,” Halsey said. “They’re also really excited and will be leading my top five as we go into the season. On the men’s side, Dylan and Matt have been fantastic. With those four freshmen guys behind them, that group will be so much better and are already so much better than where they were this time last year.”
But it’s not just Halsey who enters her first season with the Canes, but also four freshmen who share the same eagerness as Halsey.
“The majority of this team is young, with a lot of freshmen and sophomores, but it’s exciting because my young core are so eager to learn and get better,” Halsey said. “They bring this young excitement that makes everyone else really excited and it’s great to see as a coach. It’s a different kind of vibe out there when people actually want to be better and learn from their teammates.”
With all the excitement and fresh faces to the program, there is still a lot to be done and to be improved for the cross country program. The new coach let her squad know her expectations and the reality that comes with competing as a Hurricane.
“The first thing I did with this team was I sat everyone down and said we have to get better. I want you guys to want to be great. I want you to dream big. I want you to contribute to the program, but we need to do better as a whole,” Halsey said. “I have high expectations and I think they’re all on board with that. It takes a lot of work and it’s not going to happen overnight, but our focus is [that] we’re better today than we were yesterday and we’re better tomorrow than we were today. That’s what we’ve been focusing on.”
The time together might be short to start, but the excitement is not lacking with this Miami team. Friday’s race, the Canes’ first of four in the regular season, will be Halsey’s guide to the rest of the season. With a month off until the next race at the Virginia Tech Alumni Invitational in late September, Halsey is ready to see how the team competes with and for each other.
“It’s a good opportunity to experience something that I can’t duplicate in practice. It’s good for them to get out there, run hard and kind of figure out where they’re at,” Halsey said. “This meet is for us to go out there and feel each other out and help us run together, because we have to understand that we’re only as good as our fifth runner.”
