The Revere Men’s cross country challenged the Suburban League after their intense summer practices and conditioning which consisted of various distances and times.

Revere cross country coach David Parry shared the team’s goals for the upcoming season.

“One of the things we focus on is the individual improvement of our runners and making sure we are improving throughout the season. We definitely need to work on our conditioning, our strength and learning the race. We play around with when to surge in the race, when to coast, how fast to run the first mile, where to push. The tactics of running a cross country race is one area where we really can improve. We have a young team and getting used to the competition is going to be very beneficial for us,” Parry said.

Parry mentioned his history of coaching, and his opinion of cross country as a unique sport to coach and compete in.

“This is my fifteenth year coaching cross country, and my eighth year coaching at Revere. Coaching cross country is different from track in that you are spread out much more. You get a lot of different events, a lot of different events happening at the same time during the track season, and you are training many different kinds of athletes. In cross country, we are all distance runners, and we train at different paces, but it is a much easier kind of coaching overall because we are all doing the same thing,” Parry said.

Sophomore Joel Niemi is a second year runner on the team. Niemi shared his thoughts on the team goals, as well as the areas that need to improve.

“We want to place pretty well in the Suburban League… Our main goals are to beat Copley, Tallmadge and Cloverleaf this year. We need to improve our attendance at the summer practices. The summer is really the most important part of the season, over the summer one build up your base. During the season one can work on improving his or her speed and your mile and 5k time,” Niemi said.

Niemi talked of his running career, as well as his favorite and least favorite aspects of the sport.

“I’ve been running since fifth grade… My favorite aspect of cross country is running. I like running outdoors. My least favorite aspect is probably the speed work. The team does so much of it in the season and it is very tiring. One will get home and not feel like doing homework at all,” Niemi said.

Revere senior Dominic Bucci, a member of the team, elaborated on his experience with the cross country program.

“As a senior, I have run on the cross country team for four years. Cross country is a mentally-challenging sport. The psychological aspect of racing may deter a runner from racing well even more than physical pain. Once a runner overcomes any mental barriers, he or she can run with ease. My favorite aspect of cross country is [reaching] the end of a race. I become so invigorated when I see the finish line and I cannot wait to finish my race that I run extremely fast in the end. My least favorite part of cross country is the diamond push-ups,” Bucci said.

This year’s team included seven seniors, Mohammed Abdullah, Bucci, Victor Deleon, David Gerber, Kyle MacInnis, Mike Miller and Michael Salopek. The team finished seventh in the Suburban League, with every member of the team setting a new personal record at either the Super Duals or the Brecksville meet.