Transcript
With us on coaches corner, KWBG, gonna talk Ogden cross country today with Ryan Kubliska, Bulldogs. Boy, talk about, I'm not gonna say picture perfect because I know you would have liked to not maybe have some of the muddy spots that you had coach, but boy, lower 70s on a race day, no rain, maybe a couple of clouds in sight. I mean, temperature and weather conditions wise, Ryan, you dialed it up perfect on Monday. We did, Ryan. We had a lot of good fortune with how things played out for this meet, weather, especially for spectators. It was a great day to be out of the course and enjoying across country meet. And as we know, that's maybe been in short supply this year with all the rain we've had lately and the extreme heat we had early on in the season. There's just been a lot of cancellation. I know talking to some other coaches last night, there were schools that hadn't raced in at least the last two weeks. And we had some teams that last night was only their second race of the season. Wow. And yeah, even in our program, we had kids that just ran their first race of the year five days ago when we went to Grundy Center. So all of us as a group of coaches, we were pretty excited that the weather worked out for us with the dry day on Sunday and a very nice day yesterday. So excited to get a meet in. And on top of that, just super fortunate to have good help from all of our volunteers from the parents, our communities, our school staff, and especially from the folks at Boone County Conservation just helping us to prepare the site, manage logistics on race day. Great day to be out on the course. And we had a great time hosting everybody and giving all those kids a chance to compete yesterday. I swear, Ryan, we talk about this meet every year and every year I tell you, I'm gonna check to see what the first meet was for how many teams and kids because you guys have just absolutely blown past that. Girls wise yesterday, and this is just varsity that I'm mentioning, but 115 girls had a chance to get on the course. And then I saw 74 middle school girls as well. Let's start on that side of things, coach with the girls. And Sophie was able to finish 22nd overall for you in 2212. Team wise, I thought you had some outstanding competition there, three ranked teams. Obviously Boone was there as well. So you got a squad that's two classes bigger than Ogden. How'd you think the girls competed overall? We're very happy to see the effort we got from our girls. For us, the meets that we've been in this year, this was the most challenging course we've had so far this year. Temperature wise, maybe a little more, a little warmer than ideal for what the runners like to see. I know it was great for spectators, but saw a lot of great effort out there last night. We've said all year, this is a girl's team that has a lot of new faces, new runners that are still learning how to race, but especially in the past week, we've seen some very big strides from our team and seen a lot of improvements in how we race, and the times have definitely reflected that. You mentioned Sophie Seligman. She has been a reliable number one runner for us, all seems among. She's put together two very strong races in a row in the past week. We've got Kelsey Spencer and Elena Wilson, who have developed into some consistent second and third runners for us. Same thing for them, very much improved in the past week with their racing. And then just in the last five days, just so Lola Shaviler, Ryland Casey, have also made some big gains and have kind of developed into the fourth and fifth runners that are making our team scores come down and giving us a lot tighter pack of runners from number one through five for the girls. Well, and then on the boys side of things, if you thought the competition was great on the girls side, I thought the boys was just as good. You had four ranked teams, including three from the top 10 with Riverside, Ankeny Christian and Erlen that were all there. Of course, Madrid boys, we know were ranked as well. Coach, a boys finish with 176 points. Miles and Beck were both in the top 15. Luke Fisher just out of the top 30 for a freshman. Boy, you got to be super excited for where the boys were able to kind of put things together on a Monday night. Yeah, same as the girls, we got to see a lot of great effort out there from the boys. And we've talked about how much this meet has grown and it's grown in the number of teams there, but also in terms of quality. And we got to see several teams that are competing for state championships this year and teams that are probably going to be competing for top 10 spots at the state meet. And so that's made the individual runner competition a lot deeper as well for Miles and Beck to be medalists in a race like this. And in a meet that I think is probably a little higher quality competition than a typical district meet for them to be Miles in the top 10 and Beck in 11th place. I think that will give them a very good chance to earn one of those 10 state qualifier spots when we get to districts in three weeks. Kind of hard to believe that. But for the rest of the boys team, I think we're continuing to see some big improvements. Brody Hitzman just ran his first race last week. So one of those kids, it's still learning how to race. We think we have a pretty strong trio for the boys team. That first race last week, Brody was two minutes behind our third runner. And last night, he had that down to a minute and a half. So he's going to have a big role to play in helping us build our best team this year. And he's making some pretty big strides for the boys as well. Well, besides the fact that we actually had a great meet day, which it just feels like has been few and far between. Ryan, tell us what's coming up for the Ogden Cross Country team. You just said the dreaded post-season word because we're never ready for that. But yet we're almost there. But what's coming up next for Ogden Cross Country?
We've got a little longer break before our next meet. We competed on Monday this week. We have a Thursday meet next week. So that gives us eight or nine days to get ready. We'll compete at the South Hamilton meet over on the Jewel Golf Course. I think it's a race that has a real similar to what we just ran last night. It's a large field of teams, but it's mostly 1A and two-way schools. Tends to be a very competitive meet. And it's a course that has some similar challenges to, I think, the course that we raced on last night out of Don Williams. What I like heading into this meet is we'll get to see a lot of the same schools that were at our meet last night. So our kids will be able to take what we learned from this week and make some adjustments and set some goals. Like, okay, can I go catch one of these runners that was maybe ahead of me by a few spots last night and see if we can make some improvement that way? We may, with all the cancellations that we've had, we may try and sneak in one more make-up meet yet, but we haven't come to a final decision on that. But for right now, this is homecoming week and we want kids to enjoy all the fun that comes with that and we wanna keep preparing to be the best team that we can be when we get to postseason coming up here. Ryan, as always, thank you so much for some time. Best of luck next week in Juul. We'll talk to you again here in a couple. Great, thank you, Ryan. You bet. Ryan Kabliske again joining us, Ogden Cross Country on Coaches Corner.
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