No matter how good a team is, their success is not measured by their statistics or awards won. It is measured by how they perform in the crucial moments. For the cross country team, they performed at their best in the most crucial moment of the season.
Three runners placed in the state championship this year. Senior Dalton Heller finished 8th with a time of 16:15 while senior Dylan Lender finished 11th out of the 96 runners on the boys side with a time of 16:22. Sophomore Abbi Durow finished 7th out of the 100 runners on the girls side with a time of 19:31.
“I felt really good about my chances of making it to state this year,” Durow said. “I made it to state last year as a freshman and I knew I was working hard enough to make it again this year.”
“I felt like I could make it to state all season,” Lender said. “I definitely felt that if I did what I was capable of doing I definitely felt I would make it.”
“They committed to buying in from day one,” head coach Trevor Wiegert said. “They’re all super talented runners and obviously that helped from the beginning. However, when they combined that with the work they were willing to put in, that was the biggest reason for the success they had.”
Qualifying for the state championship is an incredibly difficult feat. In order to qualify for the state championship individually a runner must place in the top 15 in their district which is made up of 49 runners.
“Districts didn’t go exactly as I planned,” Lender said. “I was having trouble throughout the meet but I was happy I placed high enough to qualify for state.”
“For me personally, I know I could have run better,” Durow said. “However, I still did well enough to place for the state championship, but I still feel I could’ve run better.”
Making it to this point was not easy for these runners as they had to put in months of preparation to get ready for this moment.
“During the summer I started running six days a week to get ready for the season,” Lender said.
“I started training for the season during the summer,” Durow said. “I also kept practicing during the season so I was prepared for the moment.”
“They ran lots of miles together during the summer,” Wiegert said. “That’s really the big thing especially over the course of summer and the season. They continue to buy into each other and continue to put in the work and the workouts every day to raise their level.”
Even after qualifying for the state championship, the work was not done for the season.
“After districts, we kept practicing every day and did a few more workouts,” Wiegert said. “However, they’re at that point where they have put in most of the work so just getting them ready and fine tuning them is the biggest part of it.”
No matter how much preparation a runner puts into training, there are always unexpected elements that the runners must make adjustments for.
“I definitely had to make some adjustments,” Lender said. “It was a lot harder than I expected as it was really windy throughout the race so I had to run the race a lot harder than I usually would have to.”
“I stayed with the pack for a lot of the race,” Durow said. “I knew I wanted to beat them so in the last 500 meters I picked up the pace and started making my move and passed a lot of the other girls.”
In the end it was the work each put in and their commitment to each other that made these runners successful this season.
