The boys’ cross country team once again had another strong showing this past week, finishing 4th as a team in the Kearney invite, which consisted of 17 teams from across the state. There, multiple boys had extremely strong performances, as they continued their race to state.
Yet again, the seniors had another impressive meet, as two different Warriors finished in the top five. Senior Conor Gross finished 2nd with a time of 16:18.0, and fellow senior Ryan Kugler finished 4th with a time of 16:37.4. Another senior, Collin Newman, placed 15th finishing with a time of 17:13.2. These times helped boost the team to finish 4th, with strong performances across the board.
Three other Warriors finished in the top 50, with sophomore Dyan Gross finishing 46th, junior Calvin Tomcak finishing 47th, and senior Preston Penney finishing 48th. Sophomore Devin Neumann finished just outside the top 50, finishing at 56th with a time of 18:19.8.
Coming off of an injury early in the season, Conor Gross has now been showcasing his impressive performances, finishing 3rd at the Creighton Prep invitational the week prior, and now finishing 2nd. It is clear that the seniors for the team are going all out this season, in hopes to accomplish what they have been working towards their whole career, which is a state championship.
Gross talked about dealing with the injury, and the steps that he took to recover effectively.
“While injured, I still wanted to make sure I maintained fitness.” Gross said. “It’s a little rough the first few meets, but I just had to trust the process and know that I will get better. And I’ve seen that each week I have.”
Gross discussed what strategy went into finishing 2nd at the meet.
“Right away I got out quickly, because I knew that being in the front and just pacing off other people would be smart early.” Gross said. “I knew if I could put distance on them, then that’s really when I took it out to second, and never looked back from there.”
Gross also talked about the strong leadership that this team has, as it has been a strong topic the whole season.
“I think of myself as a role model; obviously everyone has their own personal things that differ, and I’m just there to answer questions they have.” Gross said.
He tries to be the guy that the younger runners can look up to, and learn from.
“I just want to be the guy to answer any questions they have.”
Assistant coach Jonathan Preister went into detail about how the team’s success is largely driven by their training.
“I think that just as the season goes on, our runners start to get their legs back underneath them and that’s kind of how our training model is built.” Preister said. “I dont think it’s necessarily anything we did differently, it’s just sticking to the process, and as our runners get a little fresher, and get more races under their belt, the gap that was there between us and some of those other teams shrink.”
Preister covered the key contributors to the team’s performance.
“I thought Colin Newman probably ran the best race of his career. He was really moving through the field during the middle part of the race. And Conor Gross and Ryan Kugler were leading us up front, which they’ve been outstanding this year,” Preister said.
Preister also talked about the takeaways from this meet, and what they learned from it.
“I think the biggest thing is that it gave them a lot of confidence that they can compete with these top teams, whereas in those earlier meets, they were a little shaken by how the end result was.” Priester said.
Preister knows that the team they have can be up there with the best of the best.
“This showed them that they are right there in the money, with those top five teams.”
The next step for the team is Metros, which is next Thursday, October 10th. There, the warriors hope to showcase the best of their ability, to set the stage for the state meet. With seasoned veterans, and talented younger runners, the warriors hope to capitalize off of this strong performance.
