Before every race, the East Jackson girls cross country team gathers around junior Norah Nichols for an unusual ritual.
She pulls a rubber fishing worm from her sock, the same one she’s carried since last year’s track season, and one by one, her teammates lean in to kiss it for good luck. There’s nervous laughter, inside jokes, a momentary break from the pre-race anxiety building in each runner’s chest.
“We were sitting, waiting for us to get called up to go run, and I was just fiddling with it, and I was like, what if I just kiss the worm?” Nichols recalled. “So I kissed it, and then we started singing a song like, everybody come and kiss the worm.”
The worm isn’t the only quirky tradition.
Junior Piper Pennington writes Bible verses inside her racing shoes. Freshman Addie Kate Odom wears chicken-leg soccer socks to every meet.
Running cross country might seem like the simplest sport in the world: start here and finish there as fast as you can. But for runners, the stress and fear of five kilometers over dirt and hills can lead to panic and self-doubt.
With a team competing in the state championships Nov. 8, East Jackson coach Chandler Kennedy has helped his team develop a set of rituals to calm their nerves and face their challenges.
Kennedy knows his team has talent. They posted personal records opening the season. Odom ran a 22:45 5K as a freshman. But when Kennedy tells his runners they’re capable of winning state championships, they don’t believe him.
“Their biggest concern was that some middle-schooler from last year was just going to come up and beat them anyway and be better than them,” Kennedy said.
The runners themselves openly acknowledge the disconnect.
I believe him, but I’m definitely more doubtful, like, not as confident with it as he is,” Pennington said.
Senior Tallulah Williams said mental preparation is crucial: “You need to tell your body that you can do this or else if you don’t, you just are going to give up.”
In distance running, that mental component makes all the difference.
“If they’re confident in their ability to hold that pace and push themselves, they’re gonna get the most out of their fitness,” Kennedy said. “If another athlete lacks that confidence, they may have the ability to, but the choice will always be the opposite.”
The challenge Kennedy faces isn’t unique to East Jackson. Adam Tribble, head cross country coach at the University of Georgia, sees similar mental gaps in freshmen he recruits from high school programs nationwide.
“I think not really being prepared for the challenges that happen in the middle of something,” Tribble said. “The second something doesn’t go exactly as you wanted, being able to pivot and adjust to that.”
Tribble also pointed to broader cultural factors affecting young athletes. “People were kind of detached from others in that time,” he said of the pandemic years. “I think that combined with all the social media stuff now, people can get caught up in a world that’s not reality.”
Kennedy has developed practical strategies to address his team’s confidence issues. He breaks intimidating workouts into manageable pieces, turning a 20-minute tempo run that only a few runners felt confident completing into two 10-minute segments the whole team can handle.
Recently, he discovered that some runners weren’t properly fueling their training. When Nichols increased her caloric intake after Kennedy raised concerns about her recovery, she immediately noticed improvement.
I can see that improvement,” Nichols said. “And so it’s like, okay, like what he’s saying is working.”
The contrast between high school and college resources is stark. At UGA, Tribble’s athletes work with sports psychologists weekly. Most high school programs, including East Jackson, lack such resources.
“That’s probably something that needs to be implemented eventually,” Kennedy said.
The belief Kennedy had been building paid off: at the Region 8 championships, the girls swept their competition and finished third at the GHSA Class AA Sectionals to qualify for the State Championships. Odom led the way with a 10th-place finish at 22:11.56.
The runners are starting to believe.
“The more that you believe in yourself, then the faster your times get,” Odom said.
The rubber worm will still make its appearance before races, but Kennedy is building something more reliable than luck charms: genuine self-belief backed by consistent performance.
“The consistency that you have on a daily basis is what’s going to yield the confidence that you’re going to want on race day,” Kennedy said.
Bailey Campbell is a student in the undergraduate certificate program at UGA’s Carmical Sports Media Institute.
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