By Leah Peloff ’17

Fall Fridays here at Sherwood mean one thing for most of the student body: football. We dress in spirit wear at school and come pumped up to support our team in the student section that evening. When, however, does this spirited school activity become overbearing? When do we need to take a step back and ask ourselves why football is so worshipped?

As a second-year varsity cross country athlete, I have asked myself these questions many times. Six days a week, two or more hours a day, we train just as hard, if not harder, than any team at Sherwood. Cross country athletes put themselves on the line every day for miles on end, in all kinds of weather. We slosh through soaking wet grass in the pouring rain and endure blazing sun beating down on us mercilessly. Whether it is 95 degrees outside or 25, we will be lacing up our shoes and tying back our hair for the hours of running ahead. This preparation starts way before our first meet; all summer we train with the intention of avoiding injury during the season. Injuries, such as shin splints and stress fractures, plague the cross country runners who don’t train in the summer.  With one of the best coaches Sherwood has ever seen, and the countless days of effort and pain, we prepare for the end-of-the-season-championship: States.

To put it into perspective, the state course is known as “the toughest three miles in cross country.” It features constant rolling hills and one monstrous incline referred to as, “The Dip.” Flying down and back up this vertical wall is something no runner can forget. This year, we came in an impressive seventh place out of the 25 4A schools in Maryland that qualified. Two of our girls, Amanda Hayes-Puttfarcken and Maddie Peloff, placed in the top 25. According to Coach Reeks, this was the best that Sherwood Girls’ Cross Country has done since the 1980s.

We all walked into school on the Monday following the state championship bursting with pride. Imagine our profound disappointment when we did not get a single sentence of recognition from the school. No shout out on the morning announcements. No article in the Warrior. Nobody even realized that we went to the state meet.

Normally, this would not bother me, we are used to being behind-the-scenes. Sure, the athletic director comes to a meet every once in a while, but mainly just yells at us at our practice to stay off the football field. The poms and cheerleaders have never come to any of our meets, and rarely have I heard someone other than a runner or a parent encourage me during a race. This time, however, was different. Not only had the school failed to mention the team that did the best we have seen in about 35 years, they had the audacity to go on the speaker in the morning and congratulate the Warrior football team on the “big playoff win” against Bel-Air.

Cross country is not the only team ignored by the Sherwood community. Girls’ varsity soccer made it to the semi-finals without as much as a blurb on Warrior Wake-up Live. Lea Owens won the MCPS 2015 tennis singles tournament but barely received any recognition. Our golf team also qualified for the state meet and remained completely under-the-radar.

The Sherwood community has two choices. It can either continue to deny equal coverage of success in sports, or it can realize that there are eleven fall sports, each of which is deserving of recognition from the school we work so hard to represent.