The Hatchet girls racked up another title run in Saturday’s 13-team Fall Creek Invite with three runners in the top 10 including runner-up Dani Whiting.
The boys saw their chances drop with the stumble and loss of Jared Kiander, despite the runner-up finish of Bryan Tomek, but still ran a solid second.
“We had an extremely challenging week of practice with the Kings Hill workout and some threshold running,” THS coach John Zuelsdorf said. “Our athletes did not have fresh legs, but most handled things really well. As a coaching staff we emphasized that if you can run well on tired legs, imagine what you can do when you are fresh.”
The girls were paced by Whiting (2nd, 16:29), Alex Zedler (7th, 17:28), Emmy Larson (10th, 17:39), Talyn Jones (17th, 18:01) and Claire Kuehn (18th, 18:04). Kayla Gass (42nd, 19:55) and Kate Gaedtke (49th, 20:29) also ran.
“The hills come earlier in the race for the girls and they did an awesome job of handling them and then getting back on pace to finish strong,” Zuelsdorf said. “This type of course favors power runners and most of our athletes do not fit into this category.
“It’s nice to run this type of course at the tail end of our base-training phase. Many of the young ladies continue to improve on last year’s times over the same race courses by an average of nearly two minutes. That’s the main reason we are still undefeated after three meets.”
Tomek ran 2nd in 17:15 to lead a group of Austin Kaiser (19th, 19:28), Jacob McGuire (20th, 19:28), Tyler Wittmann (25th, 19:51) and Dakota Tomek (32nd, 20:36). Jakob Panzer (44th, 21:15) competed.
“We tried a little different strategy in this race, sending our boys out in a pack through the first mile and then cutting them loose,” Zuelsdorf said. “For the most part it worked great, we weren’t as anaerobic after the hills-which come late in the race, after 3000 meters-and we able to finish strong. Our #2-#7 boys came through the mile sub-6:00 in a tightly grouped pack. Despite losing Kiander at 2000 meters with what later proved to be a broken leg on a steep downhill, the #2-#5 boys held together for a tight grouping (right around a minute) at the finish. That’s the main reason we were able to secure a runner-up finish.”