Placing first at the conference meet, sophomore Charlie McIntyre helped lead the team to a second place finish on Saturday, Oct. 11.

“It was a pretty important meet,” McIntyre said. “I was a little more nervous and I felt like I had to go a little faster.”

McIntyre ran a time of 16:47 to win the race. He performed well individually, which helped the team place higher.

“I thought we did pretty well,” senior captain Eric Ballesteros said. “We were projected to get third but we ended up getting second which is good.”

Taking place at Willmore Park in St. Louis City, the race began after an overcast and rainy morning.

The wet ground “made it a little slower but it was also pretty fun running through all the puddles,” McIntyre said.

McIntyre will take his performance at conference and use it to do well in the upcoming meets.

“It was a big confidence booster for everybody,” McIntyre said. “It got us ready for districts.”

The next meet for the team is districts, which will come in two weeks, on Oct. 25.

“We have one hard week of training and then we have a week of tapering after that,” Ballesteros said.

To get prepared for districts the team, has a designed plan to make the runners perform at their best for the district meet.

“In the week before districts we start tapering,” Ballesteros said. Tapering is where the team runs a little bit less to “keep legs fresh.”

Doing well at the district meet is important to keep the season alive.

“Hopefully we get in the top 4 as a team to qualify for sectionals,” McIntyre said.