Give it Your Best and One More Step!

Carter High School has gotten a new cross country coach for the 2019 season. Makayla Dudley takes over as CHS’s new cross country coach. This is her fourth year teaching health and gym at Carter Middle School and has coached basketball, track, and cross country in that time. Coach Dudley states, “I’ve kind of fallen in love with the last few groups I’ve coached, and they’re now at the high school . . . but, I kind of wanted to continue that so that we could build our program. I also really want Carter to be seen as a running school.” She explains that she thinks it is important to start them in the program in middle school and carry it through to high school. Coach Dudley coaches both the middle school team and the high school team. She gets help from Coach Bain from CHS, Mrs. Heartness, and Mrs. Simpson from CMS. Austin Cardwell, a ninth grader, has been running cross country for Coach Dudley for a year and decided to come back for the high school season after finding out that Coach Dudley was the coach. He says his favorite part of the sport is simply “Just running.” The team motto is, “Give it your best and one more step.” She says it in hopes that they will take that motto and use it in everything. Dudley says, “Whether it’s [using the motto] on the cross country course and a runner is like ‘I only have one more step and then I’m done’ or even in the classroom. Just give it your best and take one more step to challenge yourself one last time.” They are still recruiting runners to make a full team, so people that are interested see Stephanie Bain or email makayla.dudley@knoxschools.org. The first race is August 31st at Victor Ashe State Park starting at 9 am, so feel free to come support your school’s team!