Coach Dan Geiger returns for his 17th season as the head coach of the Cathedral Catholic boys’ Cross Country team and he has high expectations for their upcoming season. To make the team’s aspirations a reality, the boys have been preparing together since the early days of summer.

Coach Geiger has been coaching the Cross Country team since its 1997 season and returns every year because of his love for running and helping students achieve their goals. While motivating runners to reach their full potential, Coach Geiger aims to pull the team together in hopes of a successful season.

“It’s a fun sport to coach because of the individual nature, but also the team aspect. You get kids to challenge themselves individually and then grow together as a team”, he said.

The team hopes their level of performance peaks at League Finals in mid-November, but Coach Geiger hopes to work on maintaining low times on a week-to-week basis. To ready themselves for the season, the boys began training since a few weeks after the end of the last school year.

“They committed themselves over the summer to train harder than years past,” Coach Geiger said. “The team knew that they had a lot of work to do.”

Over the summer, the boys ran as groups, but often took time out of their own schedule to train individually. Many tried to stick to schedules in order to attain certain mileage and time per week. Popular routes for the boys to train on included trails around San Diego, the boys’ neighborhoods, and Miramar Lake.

The team is considerably younger than previous years, with only two seniors on their varsity roster. Coach Geiger looks to the seniors to lead the team to a prosperous season. However, he does not discount the talent of the underclassmen and believes them to be very dedicated and well-rounded athletes. As with years past, Coach Geiger believes that running fosters camaraderie between the boys.

“They run 10-14 miles at a time. When you’re out running together that long, you somehow find a way to get to know each other pretty well,” Coach Geiger said.

The team’s season has already started, but that does not slow down their training process. The boys continue to work towards achieving their goals by keeping up with their physically demanding practices and by participating in meets. Last Saturday, they competed against 60 schools and in grade level races of over 200 athletes in the Mount Carmel Invitational at Morley Field.

There, the boys performed well both individually and as a team. In particular, senior Raymond Boffman placed 7th overall. He, with many others, gave outstanding effort in their first major competition of the season. With support from Coach Geiger, the team as a whole looks forward to their season in hopes of performing well at League Finals.

“Nobody really expects our boys team to do incredibly well, but I believe they will definitely surprise a lot of people,” Coach Geiger said.