AAC postpones cross country season

The American Athletic Conference (AAC) reached a decision regarding the fate of their cross country season Tuesday. This decision came eight days after the conference announced that volleyball and soccer would be postponed until the Spring.

While the decision to postpone volleyball and soccer simply pushed competition a few months, cross country poses a very unique problem for the AAC. Since runners compete in three seasons, the conference cannot postpone the season to the Spring due to the track season starting at that time. They also cannot push it to the Winter due to indoor track competitions being held at that time.

Payton Gleason, a junior and captain of the men’s cross country team, is disheartened about the decision.

“Cross country is my favorite sport because it is just pure distance running,” he said. “Instead of focusing on just spending endless laps on a track thinking about who’s the fastest, it is about mental toughness. Cross country brings out the true value in distance runners.”

Men's cross country participates in two distances throughout the season, eight kilometers (five miles) during regular competition and ten kilometers (6.25 miles) during the championships. 

Although there will be no official races, Gleason plans to compete unattached, meaning that he will represent himself and not the University of Memphis.

“I do not want to sit here and not race with great fitness,” he said. “So I am going to be looking for reasonably distanced races that are not too far away. The true benefit of racing unattached is that my results are on paper, it is tangible and there is proof of my effort.”

Not everyone on the team will be competing, however. Junior Emmanuel Cullins will focus on his training to prepare for the upcoming track season. Unlike Gleason, he races middle distance on the track and specializes in the 1500 meter run and the 800 meter dash.

“I see this as an opportunity to have better training, our coach is going to try and amp up some workouts now that we don’t have to rest and taper for certain races,” Cullins said. “Right now our focus is on building our aerobic fitness in order to push ourselves during the middle laps of a race.”

Regardless of this decision, the Tigers plan to continue training as if nothing has changed, even though this is uncharted territory for many of them. 

“I have always run cross country, starting in high school and going on through college,” Cullins said. “It is an unwritten rule that if you run distance in track, you run cross country too. Even through all of this, I am still doing the same workouts as if we were having a cross country season.”