Adams, Colby girls face best in state

By Nathaniel Underwood

The Colby girls cross country competed in their fourth straight state meet this past Saturday, traveling to what has now become a familiar course at Ridges Golf Course in Wisconsin Rapids to take on the best the state has to offer. Max Adams joined his teammates on the trip after qualifying for his second straight state meet, the senior once again representing the Colby-Abby co-op boys team in the WIAA final. The girls team placed 11th out of the 16 Division 3 teams at the meet, finishing with a final score of 238 points, while Adams took 77th out of a field of 152 runners in the D2 boys competition.

The prior experience certainly played a part in the Colby girls’ performance. The team ran a smart race, managing to leap over three teams over the final third of the course, picking up a total of 18 places combined.

“That’s kind of been our MO this year,” head coach Bryon Graun said. “In the past, we’ve had a lot of kids, especially at state because of all the hype, go out too fast. But our girls have done a good job of that this year, pacing themselves and moving up throughout the race.”

Senior Casey Reynolds closed out her high school career on a high note. While she finished a few seconds short of her goal of the school’s 5K girls record, Reynolds still set a new personal best at the state meet, a feat that only one other Colby runner has done over the past decade.

“For Casey to end her career like she did is just awesome,” Graun said. “To see a kid who is generally more quiet and reserved be excited, sharing goals and being encouraging to her teammates, to see her growth this year, was a lot of fun.” Her final time of 20:21.7 will stand as her career best. Reynolds picked up the most positions between the first and second mile markers. After running the first mile of the race in 45th place, the senior passed 11 runners over the middle third of the race. She picked up two more spots over the final mile and finished in 32nd place overall, scoring 14 points as the team’s top runner. Makenna Herrmann produced her fastest time of 2023 at the state meet as well. The junior ran her first sub-21 minute race of the season, recording a final time of 20:56.6. Like Reynolds, she too picked up two spots over the last mile of the course to earn 52nd overall. Her finish almost exactly mirrored her time from last year’s state meet, when she completed the course in 20:56.2.

The Hornets third runner, Reagan Schraufnagel, finished just a few seconds off of a PR of her own. In what was her final high school race, the senior came in with a time of 21:37.4, just five seconds slower than her personal best time set at the sectional meet in Colby the week prior. Schraufnagel earned 82nd place.

“Reagan really stepped up this year and had some amazing races here at the end,” Graun said. “To be able to come back from her injury last year and do what she did was great to see. If she would have just run what she did last year, we would have been sitting at home this weekend. And Makenna, not a lot of things affect her on race day, so she was having a good time and she ran a good race for us.”

Sophomore Ali Adams and junior Veronica Mateer posted near identical times, finishing in 23:01.7 and 23:02.6 respectively. After working their way through the pack early, the pair passed a good chunk of runners over the final two-thirds of the race, picking up 26 and 23 spots from their positions at the first mile marker. Adams finished in 117th place and Mateer claimed 119th. Pearl Feiten and Annamarie Schmitt rounded out the Colby runners, with Feiten taking 128th with a time of 23:19.8 and Schmitt taking 148th with a time of 24:26.8.

The 11th place finish is two spots higher than the 13th place they earned at the meet last year. They also once again beat out conference rivals Eau Claire Regis, who finished 13th, and the Marawood runners-up, Chequamegon, who finished 12th. Lancaster took first place in the girls D3 race with 92 points, followed by Phillips and Darlington, who tied with 138 points and needed to go to their sixth and seventh runners to determine second and third place.

But the girls were not alone in representing their team at the state meet. In his final race of his high school cross country career, Max Adams produced a near identical performance as his first time racing on the Wisconsin Rapids course. The senior finished with a final time of 17:36.5.

“Max got caught up in the pack to start and he had so many people to work through,” Graun said. “But he still finished around the time he did last year, so he still had a good day.”

After getting stuck in traffic over the opening mile, Adams quickly began to pick up spots as the field started to open up.

See STATE MEET/ Page 10

STRONG FINISH IN RAPIDS - Casey Reynolds, left, Veronica Mateer, left center, Ali Adams, right-center, and Reagan Schraufnagel, right, took on some of the best the state has to offer at the WIAA Division 3 state meet in Wisconsin Rapids.

STAFF PHOTOS/NATHANIEL UNDERWOOD

FINAL FINISH - Max Adams makes a push towards the finish line on Saturday.

STAFF PHOTO/NATHANIEL UNDERWOOD State meet

Continued from page 8

Over the middle third of the race, the senior picked up an impressive 18 spots, going from 88th place at the first mile marker to 70th place at the second mile marker. Despite the start, Adams finished just a second behind his time in 2022.

The state meet marked the end of yet another successful season for the Colby girls and co-op boys squads. Since 2010, the two teams have had at least one participant in the state meet in 10 of the 14 seasons.

“To end the season at state, it’s always exciting,” Graun said. “This is a big deal and sometimes you hear from others, ‘oh, well, you just go to state.’And yeah, we do, but we work to get there and there’s a lot of schools that never get to state in anything. So for us to have this opportunity is a great way to end the season.”

And while finishing the year with an appearance at the final meet of the WIAA tournament is certainly an accomplishment, Graun noted that there are other things that are just as important for the team.

“It was a good group of kids this year,” he said. “They really came together this season and this is a group that even likes to hang out with each other outside of cross country. And that’s why you coach really, to develop relationships and help them develop as people, to grow with them and learn from them. “They’ll laugh together and cry together and argue, everything that a family does, because that’s really kind of what we become. And if you don’t do those things, then just going to state isn’t worth it.”

Even if they did not get to run at the final meet, the rest of the team was integral to helping those who did get to this point.

“And you talk a lot about the varsity kids, but we had a lot of JV runners that did a lot of good things this season,” Graun added. “One kid that really came a long way and is such an awesome team member is Andrew Empey. He does all the little things, picking up the tent, making sure everything is on the bus and then he’s PR’d by two and a half minutes this year and he got to the point where he got to run at sectionals. Jacob Raatz also had a great season as the only freshman boy on the team. And we had a lot of new kids come out this year. Kaitlyn Weiland and Kalea Lieberg are juniors who ran for the first time this season and to get kids who are older to come out and give it a try is really cool.”