The girls and boys cross country teams are both statebound after placing first and third, respectively, at regionals Saturday.
Six of the Cardinal girls who raced finished within the top 12, while sophomore Hanna Keltner came away as regional champion with a time of 19:59.76.
“It’s such an amazing accomplishment for the team,” Keltner said. “It also gives us a lot of confidence for state, and gives everyone a big confidence boost to be ready to compete next week.”
The Cardinals had the top three racers at Baldwin Golf Course as junior Sydney Owens and senior Phoebe Fletcher finished in second and third as well.
The girls are going into state as the defending champions and will be looking to go back-to-back next Saturday. Owens said she is confident about the team’s chances to repeat.
“We’ve been putting in the work this season,” Owens said. “We got to show up, and we got to run our best, but if we do our best we can do it.”
On the boys side, the Cardinals had two runners finish in the top 10. Junior Zachary Arnold placed second overall and junior Alex Clobes placed 10th.
The team placed fifth at state last year and will be making its third straight appearance. Arnold said he was impressed with how the team grinded out a third-place finish at regionals Saturday.
“Today, we just showed our guts,” he said. “We’ve had a lot of injuries and sicknesses with a couple of the guys, and they just pushed through it today to get us our third appearance in a row at state.”
The boys team has not won a state title since 1996 when Eudora was a 3A school. But, head coach Jim Barnard said if the boys can just get to the starting line next week, they’ll have a shot at winning.
“We just need to get healthy,” Barnard said. “We’ve had a guy this week who only had one practice and another actually hasn’t practiced since the league meet nine days ago. So, we just need to get healthy and next Saturday will probably be the first time we’ve been feeling our best in a while. And we want to make sure everyone is feeling their best so we can show our best.”
Despite the big wins at regionals, Barnard said he is going to try and keep practices this week light-hearted and fun in the lead up to state.
“We are going to do the same kinds of workouts, but everything is about the quantities,” Barnard said. “We’re going to do what we’ve been doing, but we don’t want more stressors and anxiety. State is a big stress anyway.”
With Halloween around the corner, Barnard said the team will do a costume run for one day of practice this week as a way to make practice more relaxed. Barnard said the coaches will put the runners into teams where they get to create their own theme and costumes, and they will even run in their costumes.
“It’s a fun one, especially for the coaches to see what they come up with,” Barnard said. “We’ll just do like different fun things to keep things fun and interesting.”
While both the girls and the boys are excited to go to state, Fletcher said it is only sweeter that the teams get to go together.
“I’m really glad that both teams made it, and I think that’s really cool,” Fletcher said.
The teams will compete at state next Saturday at Wamego Country Club.
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Reach reporter Jack Denebeim at [email protected].
