Workout Week Day 1: Great Oak Eyes Up Redemption

* In 2018, MileSplit traveled to Temecula, California, to profile Great Oak's cross country program as it aimed to return to Nike Cross Nationals and vie for a national title. This is the first installment we'll re-publish each week over the next five weeks, a critical juncture for cross country athletes cycling back into training over the summer months. 

- - - 

Day 1 of the Great Oak Workout Week series dives deep into the Wolf Pack's search for national redemption. We look at what keeps them hungry in their search to be the best in the nation, and how they've adapted their training to prepare for the national meet. 

The Nike Cross Nationals meet in 2017 left both the boys' and the girls' teams disappointed. After winning a national title on the boys' side in 2015, 2017 found the boys finishing sixth while the girls finished eighth. The girls have never won a national title in the history of NXN, but both teams are hoping to clinch a win this fall.

Great Oak's Team Page

More Information on The Great Oak Workout Week:

Sometimes you don't always get the full picture in one glimpse.

Through the years at MileSplit, we've traveled to various states to shoot Workout Wednesdays to explore how high school programs write, conduct, and implement training for their cross country teams.

Never before, however, have we spent a full week with a team.

That all changed in 2018 when we unveiled our weeklong project with Great Oak High School. MileSplit USA national video producer Bryan Deibel traveled to Temecula, California, to uncover what makes this nationally ranked team--and former Nike Cross Nationals winner--tick on the ground level.

For an entire week, he sat down with head coach Doug Soles, spoke with star athletes like Tori Gaitan and Tyler Tickner, and observed how the Wolfpack trained through the course of a normal 5-day span.