Dogies post season bests

Sonja Karp
NLJ Sports Reporter
 
Give an athlete a challenge and watch him rise to it.
Dogie Cross Country coach Kathy Beehler did just that to her men a couple of weeks ago when she told them they needed to be running in the 17s, and last Friday three young men proved that not only were they able, but that they were willing to get it done. 
“We had an excellent meet,” Beehler beamed. “All but two of our runners improved their times, and several improved by quite a bit. We haven’t been in the 17s at all this year, but three of the guys did it and several others improved by a minute or more.” 
Wheatland ran two meets on Friday, with the Dogies competing in the second race of the day against Cheyenne East, Laramie, Natrona, Rawlins, Rock River and Thunder Basin. 
“Going into it, I honestly didn’t know how they would do because they were running against a bunch of 4A schools, but they raced well the whole time,” Beehler grinned. “They were right up in that top group, and I watched Carson [Bock] jump up into sixth, and then fifth, and then fourth and then third at the end and they all just did so well.”
Bock, who was the first Dogie across the finish line for the fourth week in a row, shaved 49 seconds off his season best time to finish in 17:33. Bridger Alishouse was next in for the team cutting 48 seconds off and clocking in at 17:42. Tristan Troftgruben was the third Dogie to dip into the goal time as he cut 41 seconds to finish in 17:52.
Though Avery Chick missed the 17s, he carved off 1:02 and was just nine seconds shy of the target finishing with a season best of 18:09, while Teegan Hatheway PR’d with a time of 19:01, 56 seconds faster than his previous best.
Wyatt Cole had the second biggest drop of the day for the men as he knocked off 2:01 from his best finish this year to cross the finish line in 19:28.
Max Makousky, Zander White, Mathew Drake, Conrad Prell, Gunner Ramsey and Zach Brown all had season bests times ranging from 27 seconds to 1:29 faster than before while Travis Scribner clocked the biggest improvement of 2:10 seconds. 
Unfortunately, meet information regarding place finishes for the teams was unavailable at press time, however, Beehler shared that Bock finished third, Alishouse sixth, Troftgruben 10th and Chick 15th. The meet coordinators only placed the top 15 runners and as such, there was no team score for Newcastle. 
The Lady Dogies also competed very well in their race. Janaya Ralls was 2:07 faster than her previous best finishing with a time of 24:13. Tara Carter was next in 25:09, a 46 second improvement while Lara Lopez knocked 50 seconds off to get a season best time of 25:39.
This was the first meet in a while in which the squad was faced with competition from more than just a few runners here and there, but rather than shrinking from the challenge, as a team, they stepped up and improved their times almost unanimously across the board.
“They are starting to figure out what the perceived effort is for their mile goals and once again, they learned some valuable lessons from Friday,” Beehler nodded. “Even though a couple of them said they didn’t think they were going to make it about half way through the race, they kept going and found out that their body could do more than they thought it could.”
Friday was timely for the Dogies to learn those lessons, because Beehler found out that her team was uninvited to the Gillette meet scheduled for this Friday due to Campbell County scheduling too many schools. Given this week is the final opportunity to compete in the regular season, Wheatland may turn out to be the team’s last race before the Regional Meet in Douglas on Friday, Oct. 16.