Corvallis Summer Practice

We met the Corvallis Cross Country team, home of the Spartans, at Willamette Park in Corvallis for a day of tempo running on a grass field. Corvallis competes in Oregon's 5A division is the city is known as the hometown of the Oregon State Beavers. After practice Coach Aaron Seipel served watermelon on a warm Willamette Valley morning.

Coach Seipel explains the Corvallis program:

During the summer season, how often does the team practice?

We gradually build up over the course of the summer. We start with four days per week of coach-led practices, then five days, then six when we come back from moratorium week. Before we’re up to six days, team captains will usually lead runs on the days that we don’t hold formal practices.

We also have strength training sessions led by some of our assistant coaches twice per week.

What are some special summer activities?

Just appreciating the little things, the fact that the kids get to run with their friends without the stress of school is stellar. We’ll rotate practices around, meeting at different parks/trailheads throughout the week, which we don’t have the luxury of during the school year.

I think our highlight though, is our team camping trip at Timothy Lake on Mount Hood in early August. It’s a beautiful spot and we’ll obviously do a lot of running. On top of that though, we’ll do our own little team competition, the kids swim, we take them up to Timberline Lodge for a midsummer snowball fight, and it’s just an all-around good time.

How do you build team culture?

As far as team bonding, we do a lot of the same things that I’m sure many teams do, with a summer team camping trip, pre-meet pasta dinners, frequent Otter Pops.  

The big, lasting stuff is gradual though, as it’s about kids seeing expectations in action. We are relying heavily on our upperclassmen to lead by example, setting the tone for new athletes. Our juniors and seniors develop a good sense of when to focus up versus when we can let some play and fun slip into training. If we can still achieve the goal of a training session without being disruptive, the kids quickly learn that I am fine with the occasional bit of (safe) controlled chaos… Like our girls team breaking into a line dance in the weight room between strength circuits. It keeps things fun. I want our teams to compete well, but my main goal is that our kids graduate having a positive relationship with running.

I think most of our upperclassmen recognize that myself and our other coaches respect and care about them as people first, before athletes.  This can take time to see, but when it clicks – once they understand that the expectations we set are rooted in care – it’s much easier to get buy-in.

Even the workouts that seem a little unhinged become more manageable. A couple of years ago, we played with adding one workout in early October that was deliberately over-the-top HARD for our more experienced runners. Before even knowing the details, they dubbed it our ‘Doomsday’ workout, and the name stuck. Last year, I was planning to skip it, but when I told some of them that, oh my goodness, they were ready to revolt.

What are some events that the team is looking forward to in the fall season?

The team loves going up to Ultimook and splashing around in the mud. It’s not necessarily our first race, but it always feels like our season kick-off since some of the team will still be gone up to that point.

Last season was our first time doing an in-season overnight trip, where we took a group up to Hole in the Wall. It’s not the full team, but we’ll do a similar trip this year, taking a group up to the HOKA John Payne Invite hosted by Curtis HS. Last year this trip conflicted with the Homecoming, so the team all dressed up to go to Olive Garden the night before the race. They loved that and it might stick as a tradition.

I know a lot of the kids are excited to race at Rose City this year, having seen the fast times that get run on that course.

Then if everything works out for us, we’ve got some boys that are excited to get to compete in their first state meet after having graduated 4 of our 7 from last year. None of our 7 girls who competed at state last year graduated though, and we’re all excited to see how the season goes for them.

After practice we spoke with Corvallis athletes Lillie, Calla, Christian and Ben:

What do you look forward to during the summer season?

Lillie: We have a camping trip every year so that's really fun and it's just fun to have the mornings to hang out with everyone even if it's 90°

Calla: I look forward to the camping trip and also, we do like team brunches sometimes after practices

Christian: I look forward to Ultimook. It's really fun for our team. We sleep the night over before and lots of group bonding and it's really good.

Ben: I really like Saturday long runs. I think they're really fun way to connect with the group.

What do you look forward to the cross country season?

Lillie: I am looking forward to the travel meet, isn't John Payne Invitational? Hopefully it's going to be really fun. Hopefully we won't kill our coaches. Last year we had, I think in the course of six days, we had 22 hours of him driving the bus and I think it probably he aged about five years in those six days, so I am looking forward to more stuff like that.

Calla: I look forward to the meet in Seattle and then also we have team pasta feeds for every single meet which is a really fun way to connect. We alternate between houses and  I think it connects to the teams and like it's just a good way to do things outside of cross country.

Christian: I look forward to NXR. It's a super big like cross regionals meet and we always stay in a hotel room.  Lots of the team goes up to that and we do lots of fun things there.

Ben: I really like traveling with the team bus rides and the overnight stuff like they were saying and just getting to connect with the team outside of the races and the practices.

To view the photos from the practice, click HERE