By BRIAN JENNINGS STAFF WRITER They dashed through the woods, sprinted around the lake, leapt over bails of hay, and trudged their way through the mud. Instead of running a standard race, high school and middle school cross country teams gathered to run in teams of two or four athletes in the fifth annual Sloper Relays at Camp Sloper on Friday, Sept. 25. Nine different divisions all started at the same starting line to the sound of the same gun, with each leg distancing at 1.5 miles. The meet has grown in the last two years, going from 400 to 900 athletes and 40 teams this year, but a new feature that was added to the course was a 100-foot mud pit, along with some hay bales for each leg. “My thought after my first year as head coach was that if you’re going to make it a fun meet, let’s really make it a fun meet,” said Southington coach Dan Dachelet. “With that in mind, I began trying to figure out a way to add an optional mud pit and hay bale barriers. I was fortunate this year that Camp Sloper had just leveled their BMX course on the far […]
By BRIAN JENNINGS STAFF WRITER They dashed through the woods, sprinted around the lake, leapt over bails of hay, and trudged their way through the mud. Instead of running a standard race, high school and middle school cross country teams gathered to run in teams of two or four athletes in the fifth annual Sloper Relays at Camp Sloper on Friday, Sept. 25. Nine different divisions all started at the same starting line to the sound of the same gun, with each leg distancing at 1.5 miles. The meet has grown in the last two years, going from 400 to 900 athletes and 40 teams this year, but a new feature that was added to the course was a 100-foot mud pit, along with some hay bales for each leg. “My thought after my first year as head coach was that if you’re going to make it a fun meet, let’s really make it a fun meet,” said Southington coach Dan Dachelet. “With that in mind, I began trying to figure out a way to add an optional mud pit and hay bale barriers. I was fortunate this year that Camp Sloper had just leveled their BMX course on the far […]