For Rick and Marcia Sonneborn, this season has been a dream come true.

The Lady Pioneers cross country team finished the regular season with a 9-1 record, which placed them second in Section 3 of Division II behind undefeated conference foe Brownsville.

The Sonneborn’s first started the cross country program in 2010 when their daughter Mikayla was an independent runner for the club team at West Greene. Mikayla would go on to be a four-year letterman at the University of Tulane. Her success led the Sonneborn’s to be persistent in asking the school board to make girls cross country an official sport for West Greene.

“We felt that after seeing what our daughter was able to do and accomplish at Tulane that we could really do some good for this school and community by producing more athletes for cross country,” said Marcia Sonneborn.

In 2013, girls cross country was made an official sport at West Greene. The past couple years, West Greene had only a total of four runners on their team. This year, however, they have their first full team with a total of 11 runners.

Out of the 11 total runners they have, seven are freshman and one of their juniors is a first year runner. Sonneborn expressed what that has meant for her program moving forward.

“It is a great sign because it lets us know that we will have a solid program for the next couple of years, and it has been a long time coming,” Sonneborn said.

Rachel Jones is the lone senior for the Lady Pioneers and expressed what it meant to have a full team for the first time.

“It really has been great because it of course helps us in competitions because it was hard to win when we only had four runners every year,” Jones said. “It helps with practice as well because we all can push each other harder with more people.”

Rick Sonneborn said that one of the ways they were able to convince runners to come to the team was that it would keep them in shape for their other sports.

This method helped them land two of the team’s best runners in junior twins Madison and McKenna Lampe three years ago.

“At first I did not really know what [cross country] was,” said McKenna Lampe. “I wanted to try it out knowing it would keep me in shape for basketball.”

For McKenna Lampe, this would be her third straight season of reaching the state finals, and her sister Madison is going on her second straight state finals trip.

“I think I can do a lot better than I did [last year], and with a full team it has helped me push myself harder because there is more competition in practice,” said Madison Lampe.

The Lady Pioneers will look to continue their successful season, as now the team sets their focus on the WPIAL and state finals meets.