Alex Goertz runs cross country for Christ Preparatory Academy in Kansas City, Kan., though he is home-schooled and lives in Lawrence.

Alex Goertz grew tired of running in circles.

An eighth-grader at the time, Goertz participated in just about every sport imaginable at one point or another while growing up in Lawrence. And it wasn’t as if he didn’t love running, but after the home-schooler’s spring season of competing in distance races for Veritas Christian’s junior high team, he gave up track for good.

“It’s all flat, just going around and around,” Goertz, now 18 and a junior, said of his main complaints about the sport he left behind.

In its place, Goertz wanted to give cross country a shot.

“I knew I liked running on trails and things like that,” he said, “because I ran in different 5Ks around, and running by myself, I’d always try to find trails.”

One problem: Goertz didn’t have a team in Lawrence to join.

Veritas didn’t offer cross country, and when Goertz tried to find other kids who would be interested in joining him to form a team, he only came up with three boys and two girls. He couldn’t join either of the city’s public high school teams, either, without enrolling full-time at Lawrence or Free State or taking courses through the Lawrence Virtual School. But his mother, Amy Goertz, said the online option wasn’t a good fit.

They found a solution in Christ Preparatory Academy, a home-school co-op based in Kansas City, Kan., which also offers its students the chance to compete in organized athletics. In the fall of 2011, Goertz joined Christ Prep’s cross country program as a freshman.

“I guess with anything like that, it takes a little while to get to know people,” he said.

New to the sport, Goertz began as a junior varsity runner. He completed his first 5K in around 20:22. But his status within the program soon changed with the results of an event hosted by Maranatha Academy in which the varsity and JV runners competed simultaneously.

“I dropped 40 seconds and won JV,” Goertz said. “I don’t know mentally what it was, but I think part of it was being able to run with the varsity runners, being able to have someone up there to push me.”

Goertz has been a varsity runner ever since. Now a junior in his third year of competing, his best time this fall is 16:45.5 and he has two second-place finishes on his record.

Christ Prep cross country coach Marshall Barney said Goertz, like most successful distance runners, overcomes the physical demands of the races with his mental strength. Obviously, Goertz invests a lot of miles to prepare, too, and often goes on summer runs with members of Free State’s cross country team. In the fall, he practices with Christ Prep four days a week at Shawnee Mission Park.

Right now, though, because of an overlap in his sporting life, he also practices with his Metro Academy basketball team early every morning, in Olathe.

Between all the running, commuting and basketball — not to mention his classes in calculus, government, American history and composition and studying for the ACT — Goertz admits he’s “pretty tired” by the end of his day, which begins with a 4:45 a.m. alarm so he can get to basketball on time.

But Barney knows he can handle it.

“When he does a sport, he goes after it,” Barney said. “He’s a strong kid but he’s also pretty determined.”