Nick Scheske is a student journalist at the Walter Cronkite school at Arizona State University assigned to cover the Desert Vista High School Boys cross country team.

The Desert Vista High School boys cross country team is looking for continued success in the 2019 season after winning the Arizona state cross country title last season.

The team has had quite a long legacy of success. The Thunder have won the state championship each of the last five seasons and six of the last seven. The boys team has now won 10 state meets in the program's history.

The Thunder won last year’s state meet with a score of 31, narrowly beating out second place by 10 points. The Thunder were led by then-junior Sammy Van Alstine, who won the individual state title. He was the fourth Thunder boys runner to individually win a state title in the school’s history, and now he is back for his senior season.

Coach Chris Hanson has been coaching the boys cross country team every season since the school opened. Hanson said that there are three seniors who are going to be key components of this year’s team: Sammy Van Alstine, Demetris Love and Vincent Larente. All three of ran on the state team last year.

The Thunder graduated four of their starting seven state runners last year, and two went on to run in college. Lee Nasewytewa now runs at Arizona State University, and Travis Kearney is running at Fort Lewis College in Colorado.

Michael Bucci, an assistant coach for the Desert Vista cross country program, said that both the boys and the girls teams have already been training “for about 15 weeks.” Bucci added that the practices were designed very carefully, as to not injure any runners. “We can’t grind them too hard in this heat," Bucci said.

The Thunder did make one change in their offseason workouts this offseason" “We tried Tuesday evening practices," Hanson said. “We felt like we could pack in a little bit more in terms of quality training.”

Hanson said that it is yet to be determined whether or not that change this offseason has made a difference or not. It's also “too early to say” whether or not any of the incoming freshman are going to make an immediate impact on the program.

The Thunder Cross Country team is broken up into three levels: rookies, veterans and varsity. Each level of the Thunder Cross Country team has its own captain. Hanson said the captains are useful because “it’s like having another coach within the team.”

Hanson described how on his teams there is a paradigm shift of service. “Lots of people think ‘Oh I’m a captain you’ve got to serve me’. We try to go the opposite way,” he said.

Nicolo Perciballi is the a senior runner on the Thunder and also the varsity team’s captain. Perciballi said that as a leader, it is his job to make sure the team is squared away and the best that it can be this year.

Perciballi said a goal for the varsity team is “to have a chance at winning state this year.”

High school cross country is unique because it is a team sport that relies on individual success in scoring. “We want every person on this team to feel that they have a role,” Hanson said. “Everybody has a link in the chain or a spoke in the wheel.”

There are many important meets on the schedule this year for the Thunder. “We go to Woodridge in California, it’s the biggest cross country meet in the country: 10,000 runners every year, so its enormous,” Hanson said. “We try to finish in the top five every year over there, because that’s big time competition.”

Perciballi said that Woodridge in California is probably the most fun meet of the entire cross country season.

Hanson has his eyes set on his personal favorite meet of the year: Nike Cross Nationals. If a team finishes in the top two in their region, it goes to Portland, Oregon to compete in the Nike Cross Nationals.

“We’re the only boys team to make it out of the state of Arizona,” Hanson said. “That’s my favorite meet, because it really puts you against the best of the best of the best.”

The first meet of the Thunder’s season is the Desert Solstice Cross Country Festival on Friday.