Noah Hibbard and Joshua Orellana have made remarkable improvements from last year including a 14:29 three mile race from Hibbard and a 14:58 three mile race from Orellana. To get an idea of how fast that is, think of it like this: they were running at about 4 minutes and 50 seconds per mile. Just to name some of their other accomplishments: they are currently number one and two in the League, and they both advanced to CIF finals last year. This year they don’t plan on stopping at CIF Finals. They want to go to State.

Noah Hibbard

Noah Hibbard is a senior at Arroyo who has been on the cross country team since freshman year. He is the number one runner on the team and hopes to go to State this year. Last year he missed going by a small margin. But with the way he’s been running and improving, his chances are pretty good. He ran his best at the Rosemead Invitational a couple of weeks ago, winning the senior race with a time of 14:29.6 compared to last year’s time of 15:08.6.

• Only a couple races into the season, you have already run your PR (personal record). What has changed in your approach to training and racing? How do you plan to build on that going into CIF?

Hibbard: I don’t know just probably running hard every single day instead of taking, you know, easy days once in a while. It’s just been more of a consistent, hard effort.

• Cross Country is as much a team sport as it is individually challenging. As number one runner on the team, other runners look up to you. Tell us about the leadership that you bring in your role as both a senior and number one runner.

Hibbard:  It’s not really so much leadership as it is being part of it. It’s not really like I’m leading them. It’s more of we’re all leading each other and we all inspire each other.

Joshua Orellana

Joshua Orellana is a junior at Arroyo and this is his third year on the cross country team. Like Hibbard, Orellana has shown a lot of promise timewise. A few weeks ago, in the first three-mile race of the season (Rosemead Invitational), he showed that his hard work was paying off when he won the junior race with a time of 14:58.1. His PR last year was 15:59.6.

• You have made tremendous improvement from last year, to what do you attribute these improvements and what are your goals going into CIF?

Orellana: Well, mostly just focusing on going hard every day, like he (Hibbard) said and making sure that we run as a team and not just individuals, so staying together for as long as we can. Well, I want to get close to making it to State. Or at least…make it to State.

• Who do you look up to and why?

Orellana: Noah because ever since he started running he’s been trying hard and trying to improve, constantly improve. He’s actually been able to (improve).

Hibbard And Orellana On Teamwork

Hibbard and Orellana are training partners who use their competitiveness to motivate each other. With common goals, they push each other to train harder and race faster.

• How has having each other as teammates impacted your running?

Hibbard: It’s just made us more competitive with each other which has probably translated to our training of how much we improve. Our competitiveness is pretty much just what fuels us to get better and better.

(Orellana agrees with Hibbard on this point)

• Give us your honest assessment of the team’s chances as far as State this season.

Hibbard: As a team, it really just depends on how hard everybody else is willing to work: if they’re going to be lazy or if they’re going to just put it all out there and try their hardest. As of right now, I think if we keep improving the way that we are improving we probably have a 50 to 60 (percent chance). It’s going to be a lot higher if everybody is putting in the work and we just like, you know, we keep a good work ethic but then again, if we just decide you know, like slack off a little bit, then our chances are zero.

Orellana: It depends on the training that we get from now on. We’re done with the base part of the training and now that we’re getting into the competitive phase. We still have a lot of work to do when it comes to training and if it’s not the right kind of work then we might not get as close as we actually hope to.