Cross country team prepares for opener

The Mountain Home Tiger cross country team opens its season this Saturday at Bishop Kelly High School.

Tiger cross country coach Doug Root was pleased with this year's turnout.

"Right now we've got 18 kids, which is the best turnout we've had in a couple years.

"We've got 10 girls and eight boys. We're very young, primarily freshmen and sophomores. We've got two juniors and we'll have one senior on the team is what it looks like right now.

"We've got a couple boys that ran in junior high, Charlie Blacklock and Brett Kohring, who were part of last year's eighth-grade league championship team, and they're going to be good runners, but as I said, they're freshmen," Root said.

"For the girls, coming back we have Piper Coffin, Kelci Robinson and Jesse Cameron, who were the leaders on the girls team last year, so the girls team is looking pretty good right now, but it's awfully early to tell."

Coach Root hopes to have full teams ready to compete at Saturday's meet at Bishop Kelly.

"We're hoping we'll have a full boys team and a full girls team for the Bishop Kelly meet, but right now we've got three or four kids that are battling the flu, so we'll have to wait and see if we'll have enough kids with enough practices to actually have a team, but we will run and we will compete there."