Nick Scheske is a student journalist at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism at Arizona State University assigned to cover the Desert Vista Boys cross country team.

How does teamwork come into play in a sport where the work that the team does is very much not combined? High school cross country is a unique sport that is not inherently built upon the success of the team but, rather, the success of the individual.

Bob Davis, a Desert Vista High School cross country coach, described the part about cross country that separates it from other sports when he said, “You don’t have to compare yourself to all the people around you. You’re racing against yourself.” In other sports, one player’s action might directly influence another player’s action: a pitcher trying to strikeout a batter or a tennis player trying to ace their opponent. But in cross country, runners don't have to pay attention to anyone but themselves and their individual results.

Chris Hanson, the head cross country coach at Desert Vista, said that an important step in building strong teamwork is to make sure "everybody has a role.”

To Hanson, it doesn’t matter whether someone is the fastest or the slowest: "You’re either pulling or your pushing them.”

A cross country team is made up of seven runners. In each race, the five fastest runners of the seven score. So, it certainly does help if a team has a superstar runner, but the whole team is really nothing without each runner doing their job.

To describe the idea of how a cross country team needs teamwork, Hanson uses the analogy of the wheel. “Only one spoke in a wheel gets to finish first, right? (It) gets to cross the line first, but it doesn’t get there without the other spokes behind it," he said.

To help make sure that everyone on the team is doing their job, Hanson designates a captain at each level of his cross country program. The captains are chosen by their teammates and serve their teammates as a leader.

Nicolo Perciballi is the senior captain of the varsity cross country team, and he understands his role. “As a leader my goal is to make sure that the team is squared away and that we can be the best that we can be," he said.

The captains at Desert Vista don’t exist to boss people around, but rather to help guide the team and build the team’s cooperation and synergy.

Perciballi made this clear when he said that his goal for the team this year was “personal records, and just racing as well as we can and just being the best that we can be. I mean that’s our goal every year.”

In an environment like a high school sports team, Hanson pointed out that it’s important to build things like teamwork and comradery because it really helps to prepare these runners for the real world.

“We try to make every person know when they leave here, they realize that they’re just as important as the fastest, slowest, whatever," he said. "Because these kids may not go on to be state champions on a cross country course or in a track meet, they may go on to be CEOs, they may go on to be leaders in the community of any kind."