Dr. Brian Damhoff Blog Speaks: XC Season Off And Running for PN

The Plainfield North XC Posse in full effect (Dr. Brian Damhoff photo credit)

 

Cross country season is off and running and after all the work our team did this summer, it sure feels good to see some great results! With it being my first year of coaching at Plainfield North, I’m still getting a feel for our athletes and what they’re capable of. And, thus far, my expectations have been exceeded by this group of young men.  I really like the dynamic of our team; we have a great mix of older and younger guys. The upperclassmen leaders do a good job of keeping the team on task and firing on all cylinders. We also have young guys who are very hungry and striving to improve. I like that our first group is pushed by our second group and our third group pushes our second group, everybody pushes everybody. Since my last blog, we’ve had two introductory meets and one “unofficial meet” (I’ll explain that later). 

 

Our first meet of the year was the EIU Showdown. Overall, we had 17 out of the 19 guys that had previously run this course PR by at least 29 seconds! The biggest PR we had was senior Jake Epley who ran the course 7 minutes and 56 seconds faster than last year. He’s a kid that has really embraced the sport of running. He may not be our fastest runner but he’s a great leader for us and he’s one of the hardest working kids on the team, I love coaching athletes like that. We also had freshman Ben Otstott make his cross country debut in 16:35 for three miles leading the frosh-soph race wire to wire and winning by 45 seconds. I expect you’ll hear his name more this season and a lot over the course of the next four years. 

 

Our second meet of the year was our only home meet, the Tiger Relays. The Tiger Relays are a fun two person relay, a “hokum karem” where one partner runs 1 mile then hands off to his partner who runs a mile, the fresh-soph race was four miles or two miles for each partner and the varsity race was six miles or three miles for each partner. I was especially excited because Neuqua Valley and their army of a team were coming. I had a goal to count how many buses they took to the meet but I missed their arrival (If anyone knows the answer, please let me know!). The most significant performance of the meet for us was junior Jack Sebok who ran his miles in 5:02, 5:00 and a blazing 4:52 on the last mile to put him and his partner into position to get the win. They came up just short but Jack proved he is on the cusp of becoming an elite runner and that’s exciting!

Next up was the “Twilight in the Woods” at Seneca. I was really looking forward to this meet as it is a very challenging course, however, Mother Nature ended up cancelling the meet as a vicious storm rolled through right before we were slated to start. Thus we created the very unofficial “Springbrook Invite,” a three-mile time trial at Springbrook Prairie for our guys the next morning. We had perfect weather bright with cloudy skies and a very nice 60 degrees! We wanted our guys to work on the pack mentality and they did a great job sticking together through the first 2 miles. Needless to say, we took 1st place with a 32-second scoring split. We also had several guys set PR’s, not too bad for a Saturday morning without a full meet “environment.”

 

This weekend we will run at the First to the Finish Invitational at Detweiller Park. For our top guys, this will be an overnight trip. We do a couple overnight trips in track and field as well to prepare our guys for the state meet type experiences. We emphasize approaching it professionally and taking it seriously so when we do get into a state meet experience, it won’t be our first time staying overnight and competing. This will be a big race for us and I think we are poised to have some big PR’s and I’m looking forward to seeing who steps up! That’s it for this week, hope you enjoyed the read!