Every day after school, junior Lilah Yoder warms up on the track, ready to start one of her many cross-country practices. After a week of these practices, running in the blazing August sun, Lilah will have run 40 miles.
However, while this may be an incredible feat for the average person, to Lilah, this is just another week in her life.
The tedious art of cross-country running is just one way that Lilah keeps busy. In addition to this autumn sport, she competes in track and field and soccer during spring. In her junior year, with a packed schedule of extracurricular activities and AP classes, Lilah knows now, more than ever, that sports are her favorite pastimes.
Unfortunately, the stress of high school may force Lilah to give up soccer, one of her greatest passions.
“It’s probably my last year doing soccer,” Lilah said. “I just want to score a lot of goals and have fun at practices and games with my team. I like to be with the team, and every practice is fun because everyone on the team is friends. I’m going to miss it, but I just can’t do [both track and soccer] again.”
Lilah has been playing soccer for almost as long as she can remember. She began in her early toddler years, took a break until second grade, and has played it ever since. Although she will no longer be competing in soccer after this year, Lilah will continue with track and cross-country, both of which have also been sports she has indulged in since childhood.
As a child, Lilah was put into sports for the sake of exercise. Even so, ever since she reached the competitive level of running in seventh grade, Lilah has been working out for an average of seven hours a week. Right now, in cross country, she is working towards beating the time of running at most 20 minutes in a five-kilometer (three mile) run.
However, as the years have passed, Lilah has begun competing in sports for a different reason entirely: the people.
“Most people do cross-country and track for the team,” Lilah said. “I started out in freshman year doing it for the running, but now it’s definitely only for the team. If there wasn’t a good team, I wouldn’t even do it. The people I’ve met through cross-country and track have had the biggest impact on me.”
With Lilah’s increased dedication and joy with track, her family has become some of her biggest supporters, whether on the sidelines or in the stands. When Lilah was in kindergarten, her mom was her track coach, and now that Lilah’s on the high school team, her mom shows great enthusiasm at every meet. Lilah’s siblings also compete in track and field, making the sport a pivotal part of their family experience.
Since Lilah has such a developed history with sports, especially with track, running has become something similar to a reflex for her. Running is one of the constants in her life; a beat of shoes on the pavement that she can always rely on.
“Sometimes, people ask me, ‘Why don’t you just not run?’,” Lilah said. “Well, I just have to. It just makes me have to do something, and it’s a good way to exercise.”
Going into her future, Lilah is considering running track in college. Where that might be, she isn’t quite sure yet. However, she does know she will attempt to run track as long as she can past high school.
Reminiscing on her high school sports memories, Lilah knows she will always remember the familial team dinners and bus rides with the cross-country and track teams. During those bus rides to and from regionals, every teammate sings at the top of their lungs, creating joyous memories for every team member. The cross-country team took one of these thrilling bus rides all the way to the top of the podium at their regional competition last year.
These memories make Lilah sure that if anyone joined cross-country, even if said person disliked running, they would love the sport by the end of the season due to the team aspect. This, of course, can go for any sport, as any team sport can provide a sense of home and community found nowhere else.
“Fill up your life with the sports,” Lilah said. “You can have a dedication every day to get better, and they are something you can always look forward to with the people that you meet while doing them.”
