At the beginning of fall practices last year, nobody could have predicted a Class 6A state championship for Free State High’s girls cross country team.

The Firebirds, as a team, didn’t even qualify for state in 2012 before grabbing their first state title in program history.

Now, after a huge jump last year, their hopes are high to repeat as champions, but they’re also taking the wait-and-see approach before guaranteeing any success.

“They know our expectations and what we work for every year,” FSHS coach Steve Heffernan said. “I think they have that thought in the back of their head, ‘We’re going to be pretty good this year.’ How good? We’ll wait until we get into the meets and find out.”

About 80 boys and girls are out for Free State’s cross country teams this fall, which is standard from the past several years. During the summer, the Firebirds had daily runs, which attracted about 30 to 40 runners each day.

Lawrence High coach Brian Anderson said about 20 girls and 30 boys are out for the LHS cross country teams, a jump of more than 10 boys from the end of last year. He expects the number of girls to rise to around 30 over the next week or two.

“We’ve got a lot of freshmen boys, which is really good to help us build the program,” Anderson said. “Last year we had three or four sophomores, and this year we have a lot of freshmen boys, which is awesome.”

Many of the distance runners from the spring track season are going to run cross country, which Anderson said should help the team improve.

Girls tennis

Lawrence High’s girls tennis team doesn’t have many year-round players this year, so they are easing back onto the court this week.

The Lions are expected to have around 33 girls once everyone shows up, which is nine more than last year and even more than the year before. There is a large number of freshmen girls, and that means time to go over the basics in the first week of practice.

“It’s all about acclimation right now,” LHS coach Chris Marshall said. “The big thing is we do things so much different than they get at the middle school. It’s just them trying to figure out what we are trying to work on going over the basics, the continental grip and the proper footwork for forehands, backhands, volleys and all that. We’re just trying to get those ingrained into them.”

FSHS has around 25 players, which is about the expected number each season.

“We have a lot of good players who are year-round tennis athletes as well as year-round just athletes,” Free State coach Oather Strawderman said. “One of the things I stress is, even if tennis isn’t your main sport, just to be active year-round and participate in other sports.”

Strawderman said the first week of practices are important for freshmen, as he will try to determine if they can make an impact on the six-person varsity or junior-varsity squads.

Gymnastics

Three Free State girls return from last season’s 6A state-champion gymnastics team, but they don’t expect anything handed to them.

Free State and LHS coach Brooke Kissinger said she also didn’t think there are any extra nerves heading into the upcoming season.

“I think they’re going to work hard just like they did last year, and we’ll see what happens,” Kissinger said. “It kind of depends on other schools do and what they have to bring to the table, because there could always be a new freshman ready to take the podium.”

Both schools have about 10 girls competing in gymnastics this year. With many year-round gymnasts, neither of the gymnastics teams need much time to ease into their practice routines, but they had to wait an extra day.

What was on the schedule for the first day of practice?

“Set up the gym and clean all of the mats,” Kissinger said. “They were mad at me because we spent the whole practice cleaning mats so far.”