WIAA SECTIONAL 2011
It started off as a pretty normal week. A couple of long runs, a couple of fast interval sessions, we emptied the slurpie machine at Quick Trip, and Friday we took our usual easy run to the park. I’m always a little worried that someone might sprain an ankle on the short section of trail near the park, but no one ever has, until today. Isaiah stepped in a small hole and apparently re-sprained the ankle he had sprained at the D.C. Everest invite. He walked back to school to ice it, and eventually (under pressure from his parents and coaches) agreed to go to the emergency room. Diagnosis: a broken leg ----TWICE! He had broken it 5 weeks ago and missed two weeks of practice and two meets. He then managed to win the J.V. race at the Rapids meet, regain his varsity spot, and run an amazing race at conference to help us edge Everest by 2 points. After 35 years of coaching I have a pretty good collection of injury stories, but this one has to be at the top of the list. It was a very tough break for a sophomore who had just taken a huge step forward in his career as a runner. I feel bad because I know how much he was looking forward to running in the Sectional, and I feel worse because we made him walk a mile and a half back to school on a broken leg. I wonder if they make an x-ray machine I could carry in my fanny pack?
Isaiah’s injury was a shock. Losing a 5th runner would be devastating to most teams, but we are fortunate to have the depth needed to recover. Hansen moved from alternate to 7th runner and Byers made several astute observations about Isaiah’s anatomy in his weekly fire up talk to break the tension. It would be hard to hide this from our opponents. They were bound to notice that the 6’7”, 130 lb blond kid would not be in our group on the warm-up.
All of our guys felt bad for Isaiah, but there was no sense of panic among the team. They simply went out and ran the race they were trained to run. The leaders went out fast, as they are for some reason prone to do at sectional meets. Things looked ugly for us at the quarter and even worse at the half mile. By the mile things improved a little and at the half way point we were in the fight for the title. It was another good battle with Everest as the meet was decided in the last mile.
Larson built a nice lead and held off a late charge from Dirkman to claim his second sectional title. His time was 8 seconds faster than he ran at the Everest Invite and one of the fastest I’ve seen on this course (Solinsky ran 17:29, 16:22, 15:42, and 15:20 here during his high school career). Anderson had an outstanding patient race, was within 4 seconds of his P.R. and nearly picked off a very good Antigo runner at the line. Sheibley continues to amaze all of us. A 5th place finish at a sectional from a kid who only became a distance runner last March and had never been to a cross country meet until this past September is hard to imagine. The biggest story for us today had to be our freshmen. Cruz P.R.ed by 5 seconds and Hatton by 11. They both ran smart races and looked good at the finish. It is unusual for us to have 2 freshmen on our varsity and even more unusual to have them as scorers. Hodsdon ran well, beat Everest’s 5th runner, was right behind our 5th and continues to get healthier. Hansen, as expected, was the perfect alternate. He had a 5 second P.R. which is huge for a guy that is our most consistent runner (his last 6 races were between 17:31 and 17:37). Tyler did a great job of chasing Everest’s 5th and 6th runners and had his best finishing kick to date.
This was a great win. It was our 6th consecutive sectional title, our 31st overall, and our 33rd trip to the state meet in the last 35 years. It is also a bit of a milestone. If you add our sectional titles to our 34 conference titles, 176 invitational titles, and 9 state titles we have now won 250 multi team meets in the last 35 years. We won’t be adding to that total next week, but the future of our program looks pretty good. The top 3 returners in our sectional for next year are Spash runners, along with returners 7, 8, and 10. Add to that the guys that weren’t able to race today like Isaiah, Weisbrod, Shurbet- Hetzel, Luetchwager, and others and I think it’s safe to say that we will have a good team for the next few years.