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Sports

Xavier Track Unites Diverse Group

Students from small private school on Palm Desert's north end are looking for personal success for themselves, and for their teammates.

High school track and field is generally an individual sport, with team scoring. 

According to Prep Coach Aron Lyons, it’s a team sport with individual successes.

“Everybody sees track as an individual sport,” Lyons said. “I see it as a group of
individuals, operating individually for the betterment of the team. You can run
dead last, but as you get better, the person that was second-to-last has to work a bit harder. It’s a trickle-up effect.”

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Never mind that there isn’t a track facility at Xavier Prep, and very few track implements on campus. Right now, the students run around the makeshift soccer field and the streets of Palm Desert’s north end.

And never mind that almost every member of the team had never run on an organized team prior to enrolling at Xavier Prep. In fact, that’s the kind of runner that Lyon looks for.

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“I’m not going out and recruiting athletes from other sports to run track, those types come out anyway,” Lyon said. “If I see a person off to the side reading a book, that’s the person I approach. I want them to just get more involved.”

The Saints run a program where the goals are based on individual improvement.  All Lyons and first year coach Kevin Byrne are looking for is for the each person to get better.  

“If a runner is doing a five minute mile, I might ask them to run one in 4:45 to earn their jersey,” Lyons explained. “If another runner is running a six minute mile, I might ask them to get to 5:50 for the jersey.” 

That stress to better ones self extends off the track as well. While the state requires a 2.0 grade point average for athletes, Lyons has prospective track members sign a
contract to maintain a 3.0 average. This year, he had to cut an athlete for low grades. It was the first in Xavier track history. 

But it’s the team members that are the strongest motivators. The students are pushing each other to perform. It’s a friendly motivation among peers. 

Xavier’s students come from all across the Coachella Valley, and as far away as Banning and Beaumont, making for a very diverse group that under most circumstances, never would have met.  

“Everybody on campus describes us as a family,” according to senior Will Tingle, who runs the one-mile events. “It’s because we spend so much time on long runs together…we talk so much and get close from that.”  

Fellow miler Karina Castaneda agrees that the team is building friendships. 

“With underclassmen, we do all we can to get to know them and have them get to know us so they feel they’re part of the [running] community,'' Castaneda said. "We don’t wasn’t anyone to feel excluded on our team.” 

The combination of friendship and team spirit is evident in how they train. 

At a recent practice, with the team meets over for the year, several members of the team that hadn’t qualified for the upcoming DVL individual finals were still out training with those who had qualified, all encouraging each other. 

With just under 400 students in total, it’s a given that the athletic programs at Xavier High would struggle against the much larger schools in the Desert Valley League. 

But Lyon, who also teaches mathematics and manages the yearbook class, turns it around into a positive.  

“I’m a ratios guy,'' he said. "We get 60 kids out of 400, about 15 percent. At La Quinta or Palm Desert, with seven times our enrollment, they’d have 420 kids going out for track there.”

With DVL finals this week, the chances of Xavier runners and throwers moving along are good. While the top three in each event move along to a CIF individual meet, Xavier’s athletes are looking to meet standards for an “at large” berth in CIF.

As a team, Xavier will move down to Division 5, competing not against the La Quinta and Palm Desert sized schools, but schools with enrollments of under 500 students. 

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