Viewmont High School’s cross country for both their male and female teams were extremely successful this season. Both teams winning the entire Region Five Championships in their division, and successfully qualifying in state. The girls team finishing fifth and the boys taking second in the 5A State Championships. How does this type of success become possible? Trent Hooper, head coach for Viewmont’s cross country team shared the team’s regimen. “Consistency,” he said. “They start June 26 and practice six days a week. The varsity athletes run twice a day for a good two to three months. That means eight to 10 runs per week, which helps their endurance.” That adds up to 35 to 45 miles each week, showing just how much dedication and consistency they put it to finishing 2nd in State, only losing by seconds for the boys. “It’s a 17 to 16 minute race, six seconds out of two of them and we win makes a big difference,” Hooper said.

Hooper has changed the way his student athletes train. Including growth in their endurance capabilities, the way they build agility work, added full body fitness, and educating his athletes on the importance of post recovery. Some of this preparation is not typically found in cross county training. Up and coming star who is Viewmont’s senior varsity runner, Gabe Hooper, agreed with the difference from previous years in the way they approached the past few seasons. “This time around we shrunk the workouts and made them more focused on certain aspects instead of just trying to hit big volume every time,” he said. Gabe shared how much determination and self-accountability it has taken to become one of the top runners in Utah. “There’s a point when it gets hard because it does get hard, and you want to stop but then being able to push through and tell yourself you can do it,” he said. That’s what creates champions. The biggest thing for them proved consistency, hitting their miles, doing core, stretching, and speed work, day in and day out from the start of summer.

Gabe shared his passion of running; it has been a part of his whole life. He grew up around the sport, his parents met on the Weber State track team and are former runners. He also specializes in track, helping the team in the mile and 800-meter run. He plans to run collegiately here in Utah with a scholarship offer to Weber State, for a chance to follow in his father’s footsteps. He also had a recent promising visit to Utah State, BYU and he’s looking at a couple of schools out of state to keep his options open. More impressively, he wants to go into biomedical engineering as a student athlete. Most athletes are known to have pregame rituals, not so common that his hype is just listening to calming music. “The pump-up stuff doesn’t really work for me, just trying to take my mind off of it and visualizing to keep the nerves down,” Hooper said. 

Junior teammate Ben Hyde added the importance of really caring about the sport and what it takes to become a great cross-county athlete. “You got to go on the hard ones, but you also got to be careful on the easy days,” he said. “Actually going easy, to sleep and the nutrition is a huge aspect as well.” He plans to focus on his times for this next season, especially with the team having such high expectations for next year. They are very optimistic, bringing most of their varsity back with a lot more experience for state. “I feel like we did a lot of speed work during track, kept doing flyovers and speed drills which really helped,” he said. Every runner found it beneficial to run both XC and track for different body training to be successful. 

The girls had their separate success, claiming the three time defending Region Champions in their district. A greater feat, they worked their way from 13th place last year, to 5th finalist this season in state and plan to make an even bigger jump next year. The top two female athletes this spring, Keira Stacey and Naomi Egnew both agreed that the mindset of the team has changed. “We realized we could, we know we can win region and now it’s the state level we can do good too,” said Egnew. Stacey added the team’s mentality of showing up, having fun but working hard. “Work hard, play hard,” she said. The motto that the team has now lived by to win. Both female athletes have full ride scholarships to Salt Lake Community College and plan to go into dietary nutrition to work with athletes. 

This entire squad of athletes show so much grit, will power and true unity both on and off the course. It’s no wonder why this team has vastly become a community favorite in Bountiful over the past few years. Coach Hooper and the team have felt the support. “The community is key. We throw pool parties, pizza parties, waffle parties. We bring music almost every day. There’s probably not a more social sport,” he said. They’ve created such a family within their team. The team even has an incredible ritual where they run and light the “V” on the mountain together, with some of the community members joining alongside them. Viewmont will be competing in Arizona for the Nike Cross Regional Championships to qualify for Pasadena, California Dec. 2 sponsored by Footlocker.