During the COVID pandemic, every sports season has been postponed and moved to a different month. It looks like the first set of sports are about to take place and begin practices. One of those sports, cross country, will begin official practices on Monday, Feb. 8 and hope to have a shortened season lasting about one and a half months. However during the pandemic, what will this new season look like?

First off, the new season will be different in the way meets are conducted. For example, there will be no invitationals where there would be up to 10 teams from all over the state competing. Instead, there will only be dual meets, races between only two schools, and they will occur between teams in the same division. This allows for races to be safer because there will be less runners per race.

Also, another safety measure being added is there will only be allowed around 14 runners in a single race which means there will be more races than usual in order to make sure everyone has a chance to race.

Another difference in this season is that these dual meets will only be held on weekends instead of during the week. This is because since many more races need to be held, a weekday afternoon does not provide runners with enough time to race before dark whereas on a weekend, races can start in the morning and go throughout the entire day.