The Oakdale Boys Cross Country Team ran in their first meet of the 2021 season on Saturday, September 4th at Brunswick High School. Out of the 17 teams in their division, the Oakdale team got 3rd place, with a total score of 169 points.

The team is very excited for the season to finally be underway, as they have missed out on many opportunities over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, just like several other sporting teams. The level of competition at this meet was much higher than most others of the season, mostly due to the sheer number of teams.

Oakdale will not compete with several of these teams for the majority of their races, so it is hard to get a gauge of the season from this meet. “The strongest competitor was just some random kid from a school in Virginia I didn’t even know existed,” admitted Reed Fliegel, an Oakdale varsity runner and team captain.

One team that beat out Oakdale that they will often have to compete against is Linganore, a well known school rival. “A lot of the kids who were their top 5 last year are still here, whereas we lost the majority of our top 5 to graduation,” commented Fliegel.

One Oakdale runner that stood out was freshman and lead JV runner David Tressler. He completed the course in just 20:01.45, a time that will likely earn him a spot on varsity in meets to come. “I trained really hard.”

Tressler stated simply, “It was a fun race.”

As for the rest of the season, the team is very optimistic and hopeful about their chances in the more important meets. “At least for the next few meets, we’re gonna be training right through them, so it’s just about working hard towards them,” explained Abhishek Muddireddy, the other Oakdale captain.

“My expectation is that we are ready for counties and… we can win it.” For now, they feel like this was a good baseline for the rest of the season and can’t wait for the many meets to come.