Cross Country races toward the end of the season

The Hill City High School cross country team is racing toward the end of its season, and the training strategy is getting more individualized and focused on the bigger picture: making it to state.

Head coach Joe Noyes explained the Rangers’ training cycle. 

“A race is hard on a runner because it’s non-stop for 5,000 meters. If you do a workout, you can actually get more out of the workout, like more fitness, better training, a little better quality, because you take some recovery in between the reps and in between the workout. So throughout the year, we take two 14-day blocks or a two-week training cycle where we don’t race our high school kids.

“All that being said, that’s not always what’s best. Some kids need to race because they need to figure it out. So this week, we left it up to the athletes. The reason we had a kind of mixed group of high school kids racing or not racing was because they were listening to their body and making a decision on what they needed,” said Noyes.

Racing at the Eldon Knudson Invitational Cross Country Meet in Custer last Thursday was Phoebe Bentley-Buschur who finished 25th (24:08.46) in the women’s varsity 5,000 meter, followed immediately by Brooke Thayer-Burke in 26th (24:22.29).

On the boys side, Hill City senior James DuBois finished in eighth place (18:42.92) and senior Aiden Williams finished in 33rd (20:47.40). 

In the junior varsity, Justin Duprey and Cameron Conaway finished 10th (22:01.29) and 25th (25:06.69) respectively for the boys team. 

The middle school runners had some team highlights with the girls team securing a first place finish with all four runners crossing the line in the top 20 out of 90 runners. Nora Moss led the team with a fifth place finish (13:14.95), followed immediately by Marley Stevens in sixth (13:26.94), Quinn Walker in 12th (14:09.69) and Freyja Ott in 19th (14:37.70). 

“I think all four of the middle school girls that raced had a personal best, and that’s probably the hardest course that we will run,” said Noyes. “To have every middle school girl run their personal best on that course is pretty awesome.”

The middle school boys had a good day as well with all runners finishing in the top half of the race and three in the top 20. Jackson Duprey led the team with a fifth place finish (11:35.92), followed by Soren Farrar in 13th (12:26.03) and Rowdy Isakson in 15th (12:28.36).

“I was really pleased with how everybody ran,” said Noyes.

Those who didn’t run at the meet spent practice time at the Custer course as well. 

“Custer is the conference meet course,” said Noyes. “Those runners that didn’t race practiced on the course, so they kind of have an idea of what the course looks like in three weeks at the conference meet, and they’re ready to go.”

The team’s next meet will be during homecoming week, Sept. 26 at Hart Ranch Resort at 1 p.m.