The Capital City cross country teams aren't taking it easy in the first couple weeks of the first season in program history.
The Cavaliers and Lady Cavaliers get started today in the Jim Marshall Invitational at Cole County Park and head to St. Louis for the Forest Park Festival next week.
"I think they'll do all right with it," Capital City coach Magnus Holmstrom said. "And it's a good experience. It's too far ahead to say for getting the kids to state, but if you get there, that's a big stage.
"You kind of want to be prepared a little bit for that, have some experience running in those races."
Some on the Capital City roster do have experience at a larger meet. Three of the Capital City girls and three of the boys either competed at the varsity or JV level last season for Jefferson City at Forest Park.
Carrington Stilabower was in the varsity race for the Lady Jays, while Gwyndolyn DeFeo and Elizabeth Dunn were in the JV race.
Peyton Vogt, Ben Lear and Braden Voss all ran in the JV race for the Jays.
But most of the others will be running in their first high school meet today.
"My goal this first year is to get the team attitude to where we're understanding what it takes to be a cross country runner and the training it involves," Holmstrom said. "It's not an easy sport by any means and I want the kids to see that this is something that I'm willing to put in a lot of time doing and then the results will come."
Leading the girls team right now are freshman Yumia Robben and sophomore Alyson Linhardt.
"Those two girls should be pretty high up in this race on Saturday," Holmstom said. "And we have a pretty good solid top five."
Rounding out the top five are Stilabower, Dunn and DeFeo.
"They're working hard to really be a cohesive group and they're working well together," Holmstrom said.
Holmstrom noted there aren't clear frontrunners for the boys team. The top five include sophomores Lear, Braden Voss and Peyton Vogt, and freshmen Colin Voss and Parker Noble.
"We have a pretty good pack, which is what you want to see in cross country," Holmstrom said. "They are all working hard. They're a good group of kids working together."
There are 13 boys and eight girls, so the boys will field a JV team while a few girls will compete at the JV level at each meet.
Today's boys race will get the festivities started at 9 a.m. with the girls race starting at 9:30 a.m.
"As far as far as placing-wise, it's hard to tell you know where we're going to be," Holmstrom said. "But when we ran a time trial, everybody was looking good. I feel like we're where we want to be.
"I'm just excited to see how they do in competition and running against other people and other schools."
Capital City's other meets include Fulton on Sept. 21, Camdenton on Oct. 5, Russellville on Oct. 12, Owensville on Oct. 15 and Fatima on Oct. 26.
"Those are good quality meets for us this year," Holmstrom said. "It will be good competition. We'll get a little bit of that bigger stuff and a little bit more closer to home where they don't have 300 kids around you in a race."