Coach Alisha

Alisha says: For the past three months I have been coaching a small cross country team for a charter school called Basis here in Tucson. The school was recently ranked among the top ten high school programs in the nation by Newsweek and U.S. News and World Report for academics. The schools main focus is obviously academics but they also provide many athletic opportunities for the students. I had a small group of really fun kids that ranged from 5-9th grade with a wide spread of talent. I put on four meets at Reid Park where we invited runners from other charter schools to attend. The meets were small but my runners always looked forward to racing the other kids. It was fun and a challenge to map out and mark the courses for the meets. The courses were marked with a combination of flags and paint and could not be permanent, because of this I had one meet where some kids picked up a section of the flags during one of the races. Luckily I noticed and was able to direct the runners in the right direction. We had some fast races that came down to a close sprint for the finish. The season is now over and most of the kids are now playing soccer.