Lady Panthers sophomore brings competitive spirit, enthusiasm

A bright spot for the Colleyville Heritage girls cross country team has been the effort of sophomore Samantha Widmann, who has made great strides since last season.

Coach Will Carter said that Widmann has improved her time dramatically from her freshman to sophomore season and has become an important cog for the Lady Panthers team.

“Samantha brings a competitive attitude to the team both Sunday to Friday and Saturday,” Carter said. “Everyone enjoys winning, but few actually don’t like to lose. Samantha does not like to lose and is willing to work as hard as she can to ensure that doesn’t happen.

“That competitive spirit has spread to others on the team making the girls team become contentious in a healthy way. She also brings hope to any one on the team that success can be found and is found through giving and believing in extra effort.”

Widmann is full of enthusiasm about this year’s squad.

“Colleyville Heritage’s girls cross country team has greatly improved and we are better than ever,” she said. “Everyone is bringing forth extra effort every day and the race results are there to show it. Personally, I try to bring a positive attitude to all the practices and meets, along with my teammates.”

Widmann has improved her time from last year from a 5K that ran nearly 23 minutes, to an effort two weekends ago at the Chile Pepper Distance Festival in Arkansas of right at 20:20 in the same event.

Carter attributes the improvement in Widmann’s time to a couple of factors.

“Her success has come from making up her mind during the summer that she would compete with our better runners, in Brenna Casey, Sophie Leathers and Gretchen Pfeiffer,” Carter said. “Samantha would start runs with them and would not let up, allowing her to be right with those girls. Samantha’s success can be attributed to her simply making up her mind that she would be successful and would do what it took to get better.

“Being with those girls, it made them all want to run faster, causing a very dynamic feedback loop that made them all get faster.”

Carter said that Widmann’s efforts this season have been a very pleasant surprise for him and said that his expectations for her are to continue to make the progress she has been this school year.

“Samantha has two goals for this season, one for her and one for her team,” Carter said. “As time has gone on since the end of July, her individual goal has had to change because she has reached them. So she has made new ones. Her goal is to run 19:30 for 5k and help the team as much as she can by getting as few a points for the team score she can achieve.

“Her team goal is simple: be part of the first team that qualifies for the state cross country meet. And not only qualify, but go to the state meet and compete.”

Widmann said the team’s success has not come without effort.

“During the off season, a lot of us greatly improved because of our determination, positive attitudes and spartan spirit,” she said. “Additionally, we trained every morning during the offseason regardless of the conditions.”

This story was originally published October 5, 2016 at 12:18 PM with the headline "Lady Panthers sophomore brings competitive spirit, enthusiasm."