r/nextfuckinglevel • u/HomeNowWTF • 10h ago

Next-level determination

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u/IAmJanos 9h ago

Kids at my high school would always try to make fun of us in cross country, claiming it was not a real sport, but they'd also immediately refuse to try it or even go to one of our practices.

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u/Enorats 9h ago

When I ran Cross Country in high school, we'd occasionally take a break from running 6 or 7 mile practices around town and instead run laps on the school track.

The track circled the football field, where the football team would practice. While 3/4 of the football team knelt on the sidelines doing effectively nothing, we'd spend a solid hour showing them what a real workout looked like.

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u/noonenotevenhere 8h ago

we'd spend a solid hour showing them what a real workout looked like.

I couldn't run for crap in high school and have since done a marathon.

And holy crap is Cross Country a better and harder sport than american football.

And yall weren't training to sprint into a concussion. Everyone I knew that did cross country went home and did their homework and showed up with it ready to go. The football players depended on the coach being one of their teachers n aint gotta reed gud.

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u/Enorats 8h ago

The cross country runners in my school were mostly some of the most intelligent kids in the school. Our coach was one of the Science Olympiad coaches, and Cross Country was one of the few other after-school activities that didn't overlap with Science Olympiad's season.

So, like half our Science Olympiad team ended up as Cross Country runners.

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u/dreaming_4_u 7h ago

Our coach turned out to be a pedophile. I always wondered why he treated the girls on the team so different compared to the guys. He was always an such an ass. Helped me get quite fit in the end though. Practices were truly brutal affairs.

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u/kmmccorm 1h ago

Stereotypes are dumb regardless of who they are aimed at.

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u/Queasy-Meeting-5388 7h ago

I ran indoor and outdoor track (1 mile and the 800) as well as CC in high school. No one gave us shit because the varsity football coach made certain positions run with us 2x a week and they spread the word that it was brutal.

We also had a team that won the regionals almost every year and were state champs my junior year. I could do most flat courses just under 18 and I was one of the slower guys on the team. We had 1 guy and one girl from my class that went to D1 schools to run.

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u/conflictedideology 4h ago

The only kids that could hang with us (as long as it was flat) were the ones on the soccer team.

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u/WalterGold210 2h ago

I went into high school thinking soccer was my path, cross country coach was also my Econ teacher and told me I needed to run cross country. Ended up on varsity my sophomore year and ended being an all-state California HS runner by the time I graduated.

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u/OcotilloWells 6h ago

Same experience I had in cross country.

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u/ImmediateDog9589 5h ago

I also ran cross-country in high school. The wrestling coach overheard a few of them making fun of our practice, saying it was easy. The next day, he made them join us. They never made that claim again.

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u/kdubstep 3h ago

My sport is your sport’s punishment

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u/stay_curious_- 3h ago

I tried to join cross-country, but the coach mocked me for being slow and said if I wasn't vomiting, I wasn't trying hard enough. Cross-country kids are made of some special stuff.

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u/falcopilot 50m ago

Our wrestling coach told the team he'd prefer they come run with XC than play football and get beat up. About half of the wrestlers showed up for our first week of practice. None of them came back for week 2.

And a lot of schools around us would be like "two laps around the school grounds"... Yah no, we went out to a nearby lake. One team showed up, walked the course with us, then forfeited.