By Kevin Gartman
Cross Country Coach
Losing four seniors with the leadership and team chemistry that Elise Boulton, Carmen Klos, Alyssa Cline, and Katie Probasco provided is going to be tough.
While we can try and put runners in different positions to field a similar varsity lineup to last year, you can’t replace all that they brought to the team as a whole.
The IATC – the coaches association which oversees cross country and track – has the Montezuma girls team ranked 20th in Class 1A to start the season.
Despite the loss of a four-time state qualifier in Elise, it shows that the coaches and those officials who follow cross country have a lot of respect for the program we are returning, and rightly so.
In the past, they’ve ranked the top 15 and have had five “teams to watch” but this year they’re just going to rank 20 instead.
When it comes to state qualifying in Class 1A, there are eight sites and the top two teams in each will advance, so you would like to ideally find yourself in the top 16 for a favorable draw.
But, but the union does a good job of typically letting those schools on the edge go to the same site to battle it out. One example of that would be last year, when we traveled to ACGC to compete against Tri-Center and Collins-Maxwell, teams who were ranked slightly ahead of us, but who we were able to overcome with depth.
All this being said, preseason rankings don’t matter one bit if you don’t put in the work and can’t back them up.
The focus of the team has been growing each and every practice. This growth started in the summer as we worked harder than we have in the past, taking some morning fun runs and turning them into practices where we worked to really get better.
The change has led to a stronger start to August practices as I think our legs and lungs are ahead of where they have been in past years.
Our schedule has changed a little bit to adapt to the girls’ team goals of being three-time consecutive conference champions as well as a return trip to state.
The team will be heading to Central College’s meet on Saturday, September 4th at 9:30 AM which will give the girls the opportunity to compete against Mid-Prairie (#1 in 2A), Des Moines Christian (#12 in 2A), ACGC (#10 in 1A), Panorama (#13 in 1A), Collins-Maxwell (just missed state last year as we beat them by a few points at state qualifying – return a full team), Lynnville-Sully (Greenlee Smock – individual SICL champ), and Pella Christian (growing power in cross country that is now running 1A and not 2A).
Meets such as this one and Williamsburg on Tuesday, August 31st, will give us an early idea of exactly where we stack up against some very strong powers in the area.
While we return several individual varsity letterwinners (14 total high school girls in the program this year) such as Mia Boulton (individual state qualifier), Madison Johannes, Rebeka Teumer, Haley Van Der Hart, Makenna Johannes, Lydia Singleton, Ashlee Eilander, and Camryn Brennan, we have several new faces in the program as well.
While not new to cross country, sophomore Alivia Cline missed a great deal of the season last year due to injuries. Now, injury-free and coming off a very strong spring track season, she’s expected to be an impact runner for us this year.
Ellen Cook is making the jump from junior high to high school cross country. An accomplished runner, Ellen was the SICL girls champion last year in 8th grade, and she’s bringing a lot to the table for us early on in this season. I look for her to have a very competitive freshman year, and she’s got high goals for herself which she’s working exceptionally hard to achieve.
Alexa Weber is a senior who has moved to Montezuma from Union-LaPorte City. Alexa ran varsity cross country for Union last year and will immediately bring depth and some competitive times to our varsity lineup.
I’m excited about everything Alexa has brought to the program already. From the beginning of summer, if she wasn’t already in her home at the lake for the weekend, she would make the drive all the way down to Montezuma to attend summer running practices and that says a lot about her work ethic.
Hayley Burnett and Faith Ferry are new to the high school level as well. Hayley is making the jump after two years of junior high cross country and we’re excited to have her continue to bring all that she does to the team.
Faith is brand new to the sport of cross country as a sophomore this year, but she’s grown a lot from when she started and I look forward to that growth continuing.
Linnea Gusic is a senior foreign exchange student from Germany. We’re excited to have her here and running cross country for the first time, experiencing our team’s family atmosphere and learning what the sport is all about.
MONTEZUMA XC ROSTER
GIRLS (14)
LINNEA GUSIC 12
REBEKA TEUMER 12
HALEY VAN DER HART 12
ALEXA WEBER 12
MIA BOULTON 11
MADISON JOHANNES 11
CAMRYN BRENNAN 10
ALIVIA CLINE 10
ASHLEE EILANDER 10
FAITH FERRY 10
MAKENNA JOHANNES 10
LYDIA SINGLETON 10
HAYLEY BURNETT 9
ELLEN COOK 9