Pearl River Central Head Cross Country Coach Seth McRaney had to play catch-up when he accepted his position at PRC. 

McRaney started his cross county coaching duties one full week after all the other teams in PRC district, 4-5A, had already been practicing. It didn’t slow down the girls’ cross-country team as they won their district this past Saturday at George County High School.

“We were a week late getting started. When we started, we were in last place and we slowly crawled our way out of the gutter and that’s a testament to how hard the girls worked,” McRaney said.

All the southern Mississippi regions from 1A-6A were there to compete. 

The odd numbers 1A, 3A, and 5A ran the race ran at 11am. McRaney said the girls were used to running their races earlier in the morning and they felt comfortable with the 11 a.m. start time.

The way they score the results are, the fastest five members of a team’s times are added up and the fastest wins.

For the past couple of weeks leading up to district, the team that gave PRC the most trouble was Long Beach. 

“The coach from Long Beach and I talked and both felt like it was going to come down to our number five girls and it did. It came to junior Ellen Kennedy who beat Long Beach’s fifth best time and that sealed it up for us,” McRaney said. 

“There were a couple moments where it swung in our favor. One of our girls, eighth grader Jade Shaw, passed one of Long Beach’s girls five yards from the finish line—she sprinted the last 40 yards of the race to take that position away from Long Beach.”

McRaney also said junior Bianca Blair performed well for the Blue Devils as she had been running in the back of the pack and pushed herself to be one of our top four runners and at times a top three runner.

Eighth grader Peyton Stricker led PRC with a 23:17 time which was good for 9th overall out of 50 runners. Sophomore Lindsay Kyle ran a 23:26 to place in 10th overall.

Blair, Kyle, Shaw and Stricker all made the all-district team.

“I told them this is a testament to their hard work since August. I can’t take any credit for this. This is all their hard work. Being a first time coach it was trial and error and the workout plan seemed to be a good trial,” McRaney said. 

“Between cross country and football winning district, the school has come together and it shows how we are successful in both academics and athletics.”