So far, the mentality of the McCallie cross country team has worked.

Coach Mike Wood has preached that his Blue Tornado embody a "pack attack," with all seven team members staying as close as possible. The results have been wins at the Chattanooga Cross Country Festival and the Front Runner City Championships.

"We've really worked on it at practice," Wood said. "We want everybody to group well and be close to one another. The guys have really worked on it in practice.

"The potential downside is that if the pack doesn't have a good race, and if you don't have that one or two guys that runs toward the front, you won't do well. You have to depend on everybody to have a great race on the same day."

The Blue Tornado's top six varsity runners have all run within a minute of each other.

"It's been helpful so far," senior captain Douglas Anderson said. "We have a chance to see if one guy is doing well, we should be able to be with him -- not gapping the pack. We'll be more evenly fielded, and if we move as one group -- even if one team has a superstar runner -- their other guys will be behind our seven and we'll have more chances to gap people."

Both agreed that the Front Runner win did a lot to boost the confidence of the team.

"It was helpful because for the guys that haven't seen much competition until this year, they realized that if we can run with the top teams in the area, then we can do well against Nashville and the other areas of Tennessee," Anderson said.

Said Wood: "It showed the guys that they do have the potential to do well at the state meet. They saw that the hard work paid off, and it was a real confidence boost."

Regardless of how the McCallie runners finish this season, they can always talk about how the season could have been. Four of the program's top five are ineligible for the varsity because of scholarship amounts they receive.

Sophomore Gil Walton, senior Tyler Richard and juniors David McCandless and Ryan Schumacher run for the junior varsity although their top season times put them in the state's top 30.

"It's a joke around here that those guys are 'academically ineligible,'" Wood said.

The Blue Tornado will enter the Division II state meet Nov. 7 in Nashville as one of the teams with a legitimate chance to win.

"Based upon how we ran Thursday, the confidence is high," Wood said. "Hopefully we'll be able to do well. There are a lot of teams that have a chance. I think that Montgomery Bell Academy and Ensworth are the clear favorites, but there isn't one dominant team, so that gives us a chance."