Olivet Academy Amenia’s cross country team is putting in serious mileage this fall, and a recent practice session showed just how demanding — and purposeful — their training has become.
The team opened with a dynamic warm-up before heading into a one-mile run over the school’s home course, a route well known among runners for its steep hills and technical terrain. For most teams, that kind of course would take some getting used to. For Olivet’s runners, it’s practically second nature — they cross the same hilly campus grounds multiple times a day just getting to and from classes, giving them a built-in edge when it comes to hill-ready legs and terrain awareness.
But the mile was just the warm-up act. The heart of practice came next: a hill repeat session on the path leading up to the cafeteria — a route students normally walk without a second thought. On this day, it became a proving ground, with athletes sprinting the incline again and again to sharpen both speed and agility.
The team closed out practice with a core workout intense enough to draw comparisons to military-style conditioning — a fitting finish to a session built around strength, discipline, and repetition.
