It's been a perfect start to the season for Katie Dammer. The Abington Heights senior and one of our PTXC guest bloggers won her season opener in the beginning of September and closed out her September with another win; this one coming at Lehigh.
As Dammer prepares for what should be a big postseason, she took the time to reflect on the past month, which included meets, college visits, some senior year nostalgia, and, of course, plenty of training.
Check out her latest entry below, and read her first entry here!
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Cross country got off to a great start! I began my XC season with my team at the Lions Invitational at Moravian Academy on September 1, where I took the win. It was great to see where my team and I were at at that point in the season, and racing there is a fun tradition for us.
From there, we started having weekly dual meets, where I enjoy seeing some friends from other schools throughout the league. It's crazy to think that that part of my HS career is almost over! My team's practices operate around those meets a bit, so we tend to get in our hard workouts at the end of every week. My training has been going well, and I know I still have a lot of important work coming in the next few weeks which I'm excited about.
My team usually goes to Foundation for a look at the state course around this time of year, but this time we decided to go to Paul Short at Lehigh University instead. I've heard a lot of positive things about the atmosphere and the course at this meet, so I was looking forward to it. The day did not disappoint. I ran a PR and won the Brown Race, many of my teammates had good days, the weather was perfect, and I left feeling even more pumped to get in another competitive race to see what I can do.
I won't be traveling to any more invitationals, so now I'm just gearing up for what hopefully is a strong district and state meet as we finish up the dual meet season and I get to some more hard workouts. I'm looking forward to seeing how my teammates continue to improve because we have a relatively inexperienced group as a whole so there's definitely still growth possible.
What has really set this XC season apart from others for me is definitely the college visits I've been taking. I was able to go on four official visits in the past few weeks. I took trips to Georgetown, Duke, Princeton, and Notre Dame. On each visit, I learned a lot about the program and enjoyed meeting the girls on the team and getting more insight into the coach's perspective. I'm so grateful for the opportunity to be recruited at all of these great schools, and it's been a really unique experience to travel across the country and to reflect and think about where I can really see myself. I'm very thankful that my parents and my coach have been so supportive, and they are really letting me take ownership of this process. I'm planning on making my decision very soon, and even though this past year of getting recruited has been exciting and gratifying, I'm looking forward to being able to focus on cross country as I head into the postseason.
