As the bang of the starting gun erupts, a swarm of runners begins their lengthy course, navigating over the natural curves of the landscape. As the timer ticks on, legs pump faster and harder in an attempt to gain a lead over the pack. While the beginning of August marks the start of a new school year, it also means the start of a new season of cross country.

This upcoming weekend the Niles West Cross Country team is facing their life-long rivals, Niles North. The team is really looking forward to the meet, and have been putting in hard work this past week.

“This Saturday we’re racing Niles North at home and I’m pretty excited about that because it’s always a good rivalry meet,” sophomore Cody Slutzky said.

Junior Jake Cachila is also excited for the meet on Saturday.

“This year I’m most excited to face North this upcoming weekend as every year we have a really well-matched meet with them and I expect it to be no different this year,” Cachila said.

Head coach, Michael Grossman, this year is looking for younger athletes to fill in the holes left in the varsity team.

“This year is really about some of the underclassmen stepping into the roles on the varsity team,” Grossman said.

Grossman is confident that some underclassmen have what it take to fill in the shoes of star runner Patrick Holbrook, who graduated last year.

“This was a big hole we had to fill this year, but with some of our [runners] such as junior Trevor Glancy and senior Chris Holly they will definitely fill into that spot evenly,” Grossman said.

Grossman also set big goals which he hopes his team will achieve this year.

“Goals for every season are to beat Niles North, and we host one of the largest high school cross country tournaments in the country on September 29th, and I would like to win that as a team,” Grossman said. “We would [also] like to qualify out of our regional into the IHSA sectional, and then from the IHSA sectional we’d like to qualify at least one individual down to the state meet.”