The pack is back.

After tying for first at the KingCo 3A cross-country meet Oct. 20, the Liberty girls are already well on track to continue last season’s success.

The Patriots turned heads at the 3A state meet last year with a ninth-place finish, but it wasn’t just about the placing. It was how they got there.

None of the Liberty runners was a senior, and they all finished within nearly a minute.

“We always train together,” said junior Megan Chucka. “We all want to make each other better. We just want to bring the best of our teammates out, and we end up being able to stay together.”

And they definitely stay together. At the Fort Worden Invitational Oct. 8 the team’s top five runners, Amy Broska, Allie Wood, Sarah Bliesner, Rachel Shaw and Chucka, finished within 39 seconds. The entire varsity group finished with 1:17. With the other two varsity runners, Aimee Christensen and Megan Larson, coming in just behind the pack, the Patriots took the invite win.

The closeness starts in the offseason, when most of the team wakes up the same summer mornings and goes through the same workouts.

“I can’t have an off day because my teammates are there to push me and tell me I can do it,” Chucka said.

The work carries over into the season and onto race day.

“It’s a confidence booster,” Wood said. “I’ve got my group behind me, so now what can I do to get faster?”

Wood said the team receives a lot of compliments at the race on how tight they run.

“It’s nice when you’re running because it’s just someone right in front of you,” Shaw said. “Maybe a teammate will come up beside you and say, ‘Let’s go catch that person.’”

It’s also interesting that the team doesn’t have much of a set order. The top four have been Chucka, Wood, Broska and Bliesner at most of the meets, but it varies as the runners place higher or lower.

“It’s nice to be with everybody,” Broska said. “Knowing that there’s always going to be someone right there if you need help.”

The team overcame a midseason injury to junior Michaela Chucka, one of the state runners last year, thanks to the emergence of Bliesner, a freshman. Bliesner has hit the ground running with this group, finishing in the top five at four meets this year, including the KingCo meet.

“I knew that they were good last year,” Bliesner said. “I was just trying to become part of that. It was really helpful because I can use them as motivation in training.”

The team was already close, and obviously fast, but finish at state last year gave them new focus.

“It was really cool how things changed,” Christensen said. “Before we didn’t really believe in ourselves. Then we decided that we were going to do it no matter what it took. And we felt really proud of ourselves.”

Now after an offseason of hard work the team is back and ready to place even higher.

The girls finished the regular season at 7-2 with the invite win at Fort Worden. They tied Mercer Island for first at the KingCo 3A meet (and the Islanders eventually laid claim to the victory after a tiebreaker). Next up is state Nov. 5 in Pasco.

“Our goal is to maybe get in the top five, you never know what will happen,” Wood said. “We’re still working hard, we’ve all just melded really well, and we all have one goal.”

They hope to find out Nov. 5 that the pack is back, and better than ever.

“We all love each other,” Larson said. “And we don’t have a star, it’s like we’re all the same.”