In recent years, the VHS Boys Cross Country team has had a lot of success. They have had the boys place in Group Championship meets, the Meet of Champions, and even compete in Nationals. Since some of their more successful athletes have recently graduated, the 2011 Boys Cross Country team had some big shoes to fill. A lot of this burden has fallen to their number one runner and captain, senior Nick Lukas.

Lukas has had a victorious four years of cross country. He qualified for the Group Championship Meet every year since he was a freshman and qualified for the Meet of Champions every year since sophomore year. This year, Lukas placed first at the Brett Taylor Memorial Invitational and sixth at the SEC Championship Meet. Saturday, November 5^th, Lukas ran at Warinanco Park for Sectional Championships and came in fourth place. He continued to Group Championships at Lukas’s favorite course, Holmdel, and came in fourth again. His final cross country race was the Meet of Champions at Holmdel where he improved his time from previous races.

Lukas’s success did not occur overnight. His training includes running 6 days a week. Like most runners, he measures his work by the week and he tries to get in around 60 miles every week. On top of that, he does core training and other things to keep him in shape. Because of an Achilles injury this season, he was not able to achieve his goal of breaking 16 minutes in the 5K, but his training has helped him get his personal record of 16:16, breaking his previous record by one second.

Surprisingly, Nick has not always been a runner. He played baseball until he came to high school where he decided to try running. His older brother was interested in this sport, so Nick followed in his footsteps. He is happy he did because he was able to have an amazing four years as a runner.

In the winter and spring track seasons, Nick hopes to “stay healthy and continue to improve before this is all over.” He will be running the one- mile and the two- mile during both track seasons. After high school, Nick hopes to continue running the 5K and the 10K at college.