MARION — The sheer difficulty — physical and mental — of competitively running long distances has brought the Old Rochester Regional High School cross country program together like a family.

The boys and girls teams each defeated Apponequet Regional High School at a Tuesday, Sept. 24 meet at Washburn Park.

Runners on the 3.1-mile course looped through Washburn Park’s wooded and verdant trails. They paced past a horse ring at the park and around a baseball field. Some fell to the grass upon racing past the finish line.

After the meet, senior Erin Cardinal said the girls cross country team was “very tight knit.” 

That closeness, with a sense of energy and excitement too, makes for a good team in a sport as physically challenging as cross country.

“We could easily just stop and start walking, but we all push each other to keep running and stay consistent,” Cardinal said.

That mindset, necessary in order to quickly push through more than 3 miles on foot, is shared by the Old Rochester boys team. 

Senior Nolan Bushnell said the boys team is a “family,” and ”having teammates around “always helps to push each other.”

“You really have to train your mind, because your body is going to keep telling you — after that first mile, it’s like ‘Stop. Stop. I want to slow down,’” Bushnell said. “You just got to tell yourself you got to keep going. You’ve got to keep fighting.”   

For the Bulldogs, the struggle of long-distance running itself is partly what builds the cohesiveness felt among the program.

“Cross country is such a mentally tough sport that going through it together brings us all together,” senior Ella Bartholmew said.

Perhaps easy to miss amidst the sylvan setting of Washburn Park is the competitiveness of cross country. 

Opposing racers of similar paces might go “back and forth with” each other between the course’s start and finish, according to senior Wes Archelus.

“Sometimes you just want to give up and say, ‘Alright, you just go in front of me,’” Archelus said. “But you just have to stay strong and just tell yourself, “I got this. I got this.”

Groups of teammates, meanwhile, can also compete in packs, running the course with each other at similar speeds.

The boys’ win Tuesday was in part due to one pack of Bulldogs “working together the whole time,” according to Archelus.

They “dragged each other” to personal record times, he said.

It was the first win of the year for the boys team. The runners entered the meet “tired of losing” and “ready to win,” according to junior Noah Robert-Howley.

“We all knew what we needed to do to carry ourselves to win, so I think everyone had that mindset coming in here,” he said.

The girls cross country team is undefeated in three meets. They aim to “keep progressing,” senior Maddie Conner said.

And a South Coast Conference championship is always the goal at the season’s finish line.

“I feel like if we keep on progressing at the rate we are right now, we have a shot,” Robert-Howley said. “I think we just have to all stay in that mindset that we all want to win.”