Thomas Penn is an ASU Cronkite School of Journalism student assigned to cover Horizon Honors High School for AZPreps365.com.

Horizon Honors is set to host its own Horizon Honors Invitational. This is the only home event of the year for the team, so this is their best way to gain support from friends and family. 

Horizon Honors head coach Dave Sheveland organizes the event hosted at Pecos Park in Phoenix. This year, there will be a showing of 36 different schools, a massive jump from when he first took over the event years ago.

Last year, Northland Preparatory Academy dominated the boys  event, scoring a total of 53, 40 more points, than the runner-up Arete Prep.  Odyssey Institute won the girls event with a score of 78, which was 24 points higher than the runner up Phoenix Country Day.  The winning runners from the girls’ and boys’ team both came out of ALA-Ironwood, as they look to repeat the same success they had last year.

Horizon Honors will have a total of 20 runners, boys and girls, this upcoming Wednesday, Oct. 18 at Pecos Park.  They finished 8th overall last year as they look to improve in front of a home crowd.

I got a chance to sit down with H Sheveland and a few of his runners to discuss the excitement and impact this event has on the community, as it is also in the same neighborhood as their rival school, Desert Vista. 

“To me, it’s like any school, it’s about branding, keeping our school in the forefront of other schools, other athletes, our community, we’ll have Ahwatukee Newspaper out here taking pictures” says Dave regarding the upcoming invitational on Wednesday. 

“He started this, and he stuck with it.  I remember when I got here freshman year and the team was a quarter of the size it is now, so he’s really stuck with it” Liam said.

Other students such as HH sophomore Miya Wells and junior Ana Gracia,  who also ran cross-country, said Sheveland is a "great coach because he really gets them prepared for all the different types of meets and invitationals they run in by making them run on different terrains and levels of ground throughout practices." 

 “Nobody ever really gets to see us run unless our parents come” said Miya when I asked her what differs from this event to previous events they ran in over the course of the year.

This is the end of the season, and the tone has obviously shifted within the team. They all want to set their own personal records and finish the year off strong, especially in front of their home crowd. For a lot of the seniors, this will be their last time cross-country meet for the rest of their lives.