Runners finish regular season

Sonja Karp
NLJ Sports Reporter
 
The early onset of winter-like weather last Friday in Cheyenne presented the Newcastle Dogie and Lady Dogie cross country teams with less than perfect running conditions in their final regular season meet of the year.
“It was a long drive, and when we got there it was really windy and cold,” head coach Kathy Beehler began. “It rained right away so we got wet, and I feel like we were just out in the elements too long so it made it really hard for us to warm up and run at our best.”
Despite the harsh environmental conditions, Beehler was pleased with the performance of her runners and two of them, seniors PJ Martin and Peyton Purviance, showed a level of grit and determination that would make any coach proud.
“At the first meet of the season at Mallo, Peyton asked me what he needed to do to run varsity and he has just worked so hard every day and I’m so proud of him,” Beehler smiled. “He determined that he would give it his all to earn that varsity spot, and his hard work has paid off. PJ has also worked hard to come back from being sick earlier in the year. Both have heart, both have worked hard and pushed themselves and neither of them make excuses.”
Though neither runner finished with a personal best time on the day, both had a personal best finish. Martin led the Dogies across the finish line for the first time this season, and Purviance picked up his best team finish, coming in fifth out of the seven Dogie runners. 
Overall, Martin finished 28th with a time of 18:16.24, Tristan Troftgruben was 38th in 18:40.46, Zach Purviance was 49th in 19:05.78, Avery Chick was 54th in 19:26.93, Peyton Purviance was right behind in 56th with a time of 19:28.31 and Jacob Rhoades was 76th in 20:15.09.
As a team, the Dogies were eighth overall, however six of the seven teams coming in ahead of them were 4A schools.
Once again, the Lady Dogies were shorthanded so were unable to put together a team score. In fact, only two of the five team members were able to compete on the day. Given the circumstances, both ran in the junior varsity division rather than varsity.
Alaina Laurence put together a good race in spite of the cold, windy conditions and finished seventh with a time of 23:43.47. Shelby Stith also ran well, finishing in 25th in 25:52.03.
“Both girls ran really well,” Beehler nodded. “Alaina competed well and just had a nice race, and Shelby’s times keep dropping so that is awesome.”
Missing for the ladies were Hailey McGuire and Avery Alicehouse, who are both suffering from ongoing injuries and Lara Lopez, who had a family emergency. 
Heading into this weekend’s conference meet in Douglas, Beehler is hopeful that she will have both teams back at full capacity for the post-season competition. Also, the conditions in which the teams competed in Cheyenne may prove to be a good practice for the upcoming weekend.
“It’s going to be a decent drive to Douglas and it’s going to be cold and rainy for conference this week, so we had the opportunity to practice that and see if we got it right or we got it wrong,” Beehler began. “We’re going to go down there and compete and do our best. When we walk off that course, every runner is going to know they ran the absolute best race they could and gave everything they had. We will know when we’re done that we laid it all out there. If we’ve done that, we’re going to be happy and there will be no regrets.”