Stoughton Invite 2017

We had a lot of interesting things happen this week, and some of them actually involved running. Four of our guys (Akemann, Belson, Hatton, and Flatoff) participated in the Mr. Spash contest with Tommy bringing home the title (along with a custom made cape) for the 2nd time in program history (Formella won it in 2010). Monty got to escort one of the queen candidates in the parade and rumor has it some of our guys actually had dates. “Blue shirt Wednesday” was a success as 2 of our guys got dates which is slightly above our ten year average of 1.5, and even though some of our guys came up a little short I have to say that I’m proud of the effort and as coaches like to say “wait till next year.” In addition to all the homecoming stuff we did something that was a first for our program as we faced each of the top ranked D3, D2, and D1 teams in the state all during the course of one week. It’s an odd little footnote to the week, but most importantly we managed to have some fun and race well at Rosholt, and two days later, at Stoughton.

We first came to Stoughton in 2003 when Fond du Lac decided to move their meet to Friday afternoon. The course is nothing special but it usually runs pretty fast and since many of the Madison area school attend, the meet has always been one of the most competitive on our schedule. Top ranked Middleton, 6th ranked Lafollette, 8th ranked Sun Prairie, and 15th ranked Monona Grove were in the field this year and we entered the week as the 10 ranked team. Last year there were 14 teams in this meet and for some reason this year there were only 11 which I find odd for a well-run meet located so close to Madison. On paper we appeared to be the 3rd or 4th best team at this meet. Middleton had raced very well at the Griak meet a week earlier, La Follette had dominated at the Midwest invite, and Monona Grove seemed to have a very solid team with outstanding front runners. As a result we had no thought of winning this meet, our goal was to show some improvement, post some decent times, earn a few awards, and walk away feeling as if we are a pretty good high school cross country team. Today we accomplished all of those things and with some help from Middleton (they held out 4 of their top runners) and the fact that Lafollette didn’t run nearly as well as they did last week we were able to win this meet for the 8th time in the last 15 years. Clearly Middleton could have won this meet, but that shouldn’t overshadow the fact that our guys ran very well and for the first time all season we looked like the team we thought we could be.

Hyland had an outstanding race and did a great job of hanging with the leaders till the last half mile. Sernau put himself in the top 10 early in the race and ran like he belonged there which is pretty amazing when you consider that last year he was 16th in the JV race with a time of 18:20. Franz ran very well considering that he was not feeling quite 100% and the rest of our guys, Belson, Strojny, Flatoff, and Meixner all ran their best times (other than at Smiley which was short). Best of all they were still competitive in the last mile which was good to see. The weather and course conditions (other than a few hundred 90 degree turns and some odd flag placements) were ideal which resulted in some very good times. Our 16:40 average is our 5th best at this meet behind our ‘06, ‘07, ‘08 and 2013 teams. Of course these are just numbers on a result sheet and times run on a not very challenging course, but for the first time all season I feel as if we are a team that deserves to be ranked in the top 10 and perhaps even a little bit higher.

Today’s JV race turned out to be a very interesting contest between our guys and a much improved Lafollette team. Last year we finished 59 points ahead of them with a near perfect score of 16, but this year they used outstanding depth to edge us by 5. Brogan and Rozek got to the front of the race early with a large pack of LaFollette guys not far behind. Things didn’t look good at the half way point but Keifer, Ceplina, Manthy, and Richmond fought hard to make a race of it in the final mile. We held a 3 point advantage after 3 runners and were tied after 4 but as often happens, the meet was decided by the fifth runner where they picked up 5 points to earn the win. Our 17:45 average is our best of the season and one of the fastest our JV’s have run here in quite a while. It’s unusual to ask high school runners to race twice within the span of 36 hours but our guys gained valuable race experience, got medals, t-shirts, and chicken soup on Thursday and some of them got medals and hugs from the Stoughton girls today. Other than losing by a few points I think it all worked out pretty well. Most of our guys ran a little slower today than they did at Rosholt on Thursday but Kozisek and Sankey ran the exact same times and Leahy, Lindner, Seth Peters, Pohlman, and Veggie all managed to run a little faster which was good to see. Today was a great end to a fun and successful homecoming week for our team, and as I like to say, a very good day to be a Spash runner.