VOLGA The Sioux Valley cross country teams began their season last week and feel a strong season is ahead of them as they return a lot of talent.
The Cossacks recently competed in the John Collignon Invite in Madison and the Sioux Valley boys came in second and the girls finished in fourth. Sioux Valley head coach Bill Vincent said he liked the way his runners started the season despite battling some heat in the first race of the year.
It was a tough day. It got a little bit warmer than we had anticipated and I had to apologize to my team because we had been running in the morning and the evening to avoid some of the heat. It went well. We have a pile of returners. We graduated Isabelle Bloker as our only senior from a year ago. We showed up with a lot of experience, Vincent said.
The Sioux Valley boys qualified for the state cross country meet as a team a year ago and returned all of the runners from that squad. Vincent said hes confident in that group and has a collection of guys that are fighting for the last spot on the varsity roster.
On the boys side, they were a state meet participant a year ago and all five of them are back, Vincent said. Carson Wosje is back for us, he was also on that state [track & field] two mile relay team and has been competing in the state cross country meet since junior high. Tyrus Schulz was our second finisher in Madison, so hes shown a lot of improvement and he ran in the state cross country meet a year ago.
Dubhlainn Vermeulen is back off of that team and was our No. 3 guy in Madison. Levi Axtell has always been there for us and he had a good start as well. Bret Milton is back, so all of them are back off of last years team. Then we have a host of people that are in the mix to fill that last spot with Jackson Hestermann, Carter Hansen, Corbin Barclay and Oliver Larsen.
Its cut and dry with the girls varsity team. Theres six spots and Vincent has six girls that are locked into the varsity roster. A roster that saw a lot of success a year ago.
On the girls side, theyre all back as well. Talya Vincent led the way [in Madison]. We have Maci Licht, who was a state meet medalist last year. Ava Gatzke ran well in the season opener and probably showed the most improvement from all of our runners. We have Amia and Amya Ward and then Lily Schmit will fill that last spot on the girls side, Vincent said.
Vincent noted that his programs have continued to improve over the past five years. He acknowledged that it began when Bloker started running varsity and she is now running for the University of New Mexico.
We want to build off the success we had last year, qualifying both the girls and boys teams for the State Meet. Its been gradual progress for us and it all started when Isabelle Bloker came onto the scene and its just grown from there. We have a great feeder system with runners out there too. Our numbers are at an all-time high and theres lots of sixth graders. We think this is just going to continue to grow for us and you see that motivation, Vincent said.
Sioux Valley will participate in the Augustana Twilight on Friday night in Sioux Falls.
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