Will McCarthy is a senior here at John Adams heavily involved in cross country. His passion for cross country started in fifth grade at Lasalle Intermediate Academy when he was encouraged to join by his cousin, who was always inspiring him to try new things. Although he’s tried different sports, such as wrestling and track, he never took them as seriously as he did cross country. He says that he joined the team here at Adams because he wanted “something I could be good at. And something to keep me active.” His greatest asset to the team is his leading ability, as a captain he wanted to keep “them on track with what they should be doing, but also be someone they can look up to.” Will aspires to be someone that not only is good at what he does but also someone who can inspire others to be better as well. When asked if he has any advice for those looking into cross country or just for something to do he says “If you are thinking about joining, just do it. The worst thing to come out of it is that you do not like it and in that case just try something else.”

He then talks about the great experiences he’s had and why one should put everything into a sport. The second part of his advice is this: “Get involved with everything in the sport. Like in cross country, we have a camping trip we go in July and some people do not go on it until later in their high school career. Almost all of them, their biggest regret was not going on the trip earlier. To make memories on a team you need to get involved.” Will says that he spends 30 hours minimum a week during the summer on cross country and 20-25 hours during the school year.  He also speaks to the importance of trying your hardest at all times in “One of my favorite memories from cross country is when I just got done with a race my freshman year and my coach was walking towards me. He said “Great job, so what are you planning next week?” and I responded to him “I’m going to run faster.” This has always stuck with me because that is the mindset I have going into every race.”

While speaking about his plans for the future, he says that he’s looking forward to sectionals, regionals, and semi-state and for the team to give it their top performance. He states that he knows that “we will not go out without a fight.” in regards to future plans for himself, he is planning to study generalist programming, the people who write the backbone of code. He is hoping to go Purdue this next year and study computer science. Finally, here is Will’s take on overcoming the hardest part of cross country; “The hardest part of cross country is the mental battle you fight during workouts and races. Generally the only thing from keeping you from running faster is your mind. During a race you head is telling you that it hurts and you should slow down but you have to fight those thoughts and trust in your conditioning.”