Dogie runners rack up plenty of PRs in Sturgis
Sonja Karp
NLJ Sports Editor
It was a beautiful day for running Thursday in Sturgis, and the Newcastle cross country team took full advantage of the weather to make improvements pretty much across the board.
Mathew Drake, who ran varsity, all but one JV runner, and every girl on the Lady Dogies squad put up personal best times, despite running on a course which started with a hill right off the bat.
Though four of the five varsity runners on the men’s team fell a little short of a personal best, head coach Kathy Beehler reported that they still ran a good race.
“I worried a little bit about the top three or four guys because when they ran in the park on Monday, they were running faster than they should have been,” she explained. “It sounds weird, but they were just going a little too fast, so I wonder if they were a little more tired than they should have been because of that.”
The Dogies’ top runner, Avery Chick, was again first across the finish line in 29th place with a time of 18:14, nearly 20 seconds over his time on the flat course at Spearfish. Thatcher Troftgruben was next in 38th with a time of 18:51.86, and Sam Scribner followed him and finished 49th, doing so in 19:35.90. Drake’s personal best time of 19:45.13 earned him 51st and Travis Scribner rounded things out for the Dogies running 26:28.67 and finishing 70th.
“My goal for Avery was for him to drop back into the 17s, but he was pretty close so that was good,” Beehler said. “Mathew had a great race and our top-five runners for the guys cut their spread to just a little over a minute and a half.”
While the varsity ended up scoring ninth as a team, the JV team was able to nab fourth place against a field of runners from 4A Wyoming schools and the equivalent of that in South Dakota.
“Almost all of the JV guys ran their best race of the season,” Beehler said. “And they beat Thunder Basin, Stevens and Campbell County, so they did really well.”
Wyatt Cole, who was the top finisher in the JV race, was thinking he wasn’t going to run due to being sore, however Beehler convinced him to run in the JV race and he ended up putting up a personal best time of 19:46.28. Had he competed in the varsity division, he would have come in about 30 seconds behind Drake.
“I knew he had it in him, I just needed to convince him he could,” Beehler shrugged. “I told him just to go out and run and he was able to get a PR.”
Due to their improvements, the JV squad was able to cut their spread
to just 1:07 between the first and fifth runners.
Nick Lopez and Tayson Wheeler finished 19th and 20th with times of 20:50.53 and 20:52.72, respectively. Ben Carter was close behind in 22nd and only 7 seconds behind Wheeler. Logan Olson was the fifth Dogie across the line, finishing in 35th about a minute behind Carter, while Caleb Hoover ran a 25:13.50 for his 63rd-place finish.
The Lady Dogies also had a good day with their sixth-place team finish. Aspen Bloom kept pretty good pace with the top runners, nabbing 19th place in a personal best time of 21:25.56. Janaya Ralls was 37th in 22:59.40, Tara Carter was next in 46th with a time of 24:37.35 while Rachel Baird was 49th and Taylor Conklin 50th with times of 25:01.30 and 25:15.90, respectively. Julie Morris rounded things out coming in 57th in 27:55.35.
Though Tara Carter had a faster time at Hot Springs last week, both she and Beehler are pretty sure she missed a switchback on the complicated course so didn’t quite run the whole 5K.
“Aspen continues to run well and she is pacing herself to be an all-conference runner as a freshman,” Beehler said. “We still have some work to do overall, so we’re going to get it done to get ready for conference and state.”
This week the team goes to Gillette for the last regular meet of the season on Friday. This is a pretty flat course, so some good times could be expected, however Beehler admitted that her team historically does not put up PRs at this meet.
“I don’t know why it is. I keep looking at the course and it looks pretty flat to me. I always expect us to do well, but it may be that it is a little colder up there and maybe that’s part of the problem since it’s the first colder meet of the year,” she mused. “The trail is also very narrow and it passes through trees, so that may also play a part in it. We are going to talk about it, because it’s going to be a goal of ours to change that and PR this week.”