Carter Joy and Miles Trius recently won the 2019 USA Track and Field National Junior Olympic Cross Country Championship. On December 13^th, Trius and Joy took a flight from Sea-Tac airport all the way to Dane County Regional Airport in Madison, Wisconsin where they raced on the Yahara Hills Golf Course the following day. The boys had to miss Seattle Prep’s Tolo Dance, and Joy admitted, “It was slightly inconvenient, but after training for a race and winning it, it was absolutely worth it.”

The two boys have evidently been running since kindergarten based off their lean builds and dedicated mindsets. Although they both started at a young age, Joy said “We really took training seriously in the seventh grade because we saw how our work was paying off, which motivated us to keep working harder.” In the USATF league, they ran through a club team called the “Rain City Flyers”. Joy first got involved with this team when he raced in a CYO meet in 2019 and got recruited based off his performance. Joy later told Trius about the team, and they both trained with the Rain City Flyers.

The temperatures in Madison were below freezing, and in order to adjust to the temperatures, the boys started running at night in the rain when they were back in Seattle. Their team ran a tough, hilly yet scenic race, and crossed the finish line at all different times. As individuals, the runners had no idea where they stood on the team podium. After finishing the race, Trius and Joy’s team retreated to their designated tent and waited for the race officials to calculate the scores of each runner to determine to winning team.  “When the results came in that our team had won, the tent erupted. Everyone was ecstatic that we had won”, the boys shared.

As the first National title that the team had won, the runners on the Rain City Flyers were elated to have had their incredible amount of work pay off.  Joy said “My takeaway from this experience is that if you put enough work into something you’ll get where you want to go” Trius agreed and said that this experience was an “exciting moment to have won a race together as a group of boys who have worked so hard to get to. We have experienced many downfalls and hardships mentally and physically.”