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Fall sports for Red Bird Christian School wrapped up recently with two cross country runners competing at the KHSAA State Championships on Oct. 30.

“This cross country season was almost back to normal for us,” said Coach Angela Crawford. “We were able to start practices at the beginning of August and attend more meets this year than during the 2020 season.”
State qualifiers this year were Nahom Sintayehu and Monica Whitehead. Nahom, a senior, ran cross country for the first time.

Monica, a seventh grader, became the first middle school runner for RBCS since 2005 to qualify as an individual for the state meet. Red Bird had five runners participate in the elementary and middle school Region 13 meet.

This year marks the sixth straight year a Red Bird runner has qualified for state. Since Crawford and assistant Bev Reitz started coaching cross country in 1993, individuals and/or teams qualified for the state meet 18 times.

The success of this year’s program was helped by only having a couple of minor interruptions to the season because of Covid-19.

The program continues to grow with four athletes on the elementary team (two boys and two girls).
Two seventh grade girls also participated in some middle school races. Those two girls also ran some varsity races with the four other high school girls. The boys varsity team consisted of two runners.