WDAZ has started a new sports series called "Hometown Stars" and our own David Hettich was chosen as their first story. Below is the link to the story.
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Dear Parents and Athletes: The Grand Forks Central Boys & Girls Cross Country teams will be holding their 2014 awards banquet at the Chester Fritz Auditorium Tuesday, November 25th at 5:30 pm. Please park in the blue “S” zoned portions of the parking lot This is a very meaningful night for the coaches and athletes as we honor all the hard work and dedication that has been put into our program during the 2014 season. I hope you will be able to join us. Yours Sincerely, Sean Allan Head Coach Boys & Girls Cross Country PS Also if you have not returned your uniform please bring it to the banquet. It has been two weeks since the state meet, and I still haven't blogged about how I feel afterward. I try to be very analytical about it. I thought it would be good to share how I as a coach, feel going into the state meet, afterward and how I review the season, basically the coaches perspective. After the boys and girls races were completed the first thing I think all of the coaches felt was: relief. As a coach, you want nothing more than for your athletes to run their best at the end of the season, to finish with a performance that you and they felt they were capable of running. It's a tight rope you are walking with them over the last two weeks of the season and as you walk to the starting line you want to talk about the race, give them strategies, but also have them just run, not think too much, treat it like just another race. You want to make them feel confident, excited, but also keep emotions at a controlled level. Our goal as coaches, is bring them to the line healthy, physically and mentally ready to run. Everyone of them reacts different to the pressures of the state meet. You tell them its just another race, but everyone knows it's not, the goal is to just relax and run like it is, let the training and the sharpening that has been done work. Most of the runners who competed at the state meet had run all summer, 5 months of training, hundred of miles, all with the goal of competing well on this particular day. Some have been training year round, and the state meet in cross country is their most important race of the year. There is pressure on our end as coaches to make sure we have done the right things to help them be successful for the big day. For me I know leading up to the meet I always start rethinking each workout we did, the progression of each speed workout, the total mileage, and the sharpening over the last few weeks leading up to the big race. Did we do the right things? Should I have told them something different as a race strategy? Did I tell them too much? Should we have rested more or less? I sit down at the beginning of each summer and create the outline/map of what I think is best for the upcoming season for each member of the team, concerning their mileage, reasonable goals, and what workouts will achieve them. At the end of the season I sit down and look at the numbers, the results, that is my measuring stick of how we as coaches have done. Numbers don't lie. Over the last 20 years we have had results that have caused me to change our workouts throughout the year, We consistantly make little tweeks, and sometimes we have made a complete overhall of the way we do things to keep us competitive through out the state. Below are the facts I looked at of how we competed throughout the year, and especially how we ran at the state meet
The one thing all of these numbers can measure is the desire to compete. How do your athletes compete? How do they handle the pressure of having big expectations put on them? We as coaches can help them learn to handle those expectations, we can talk about the pressures of others looking at them and expecting them to perform. But the bottom line is there has to be desire coming from the athlete to want to improve, to push themselves. And I know I have a group that handled those pressures this year. Each team had different pressures to cope with.
The boys had to start from scratch, only 2 returning varsity runners, the rest had basically been JV runners in 2013, who were thrust onto the varsity, expecting to continue a tradition of having very good boys teams, teams that consistanly look to place in the top 5 at state. They also had learn how to handle being the in the shadow of the girls team, a complete flip of the way things had gone in the past. The boys maybe had the biggest improvement of a team I have ever had. The team captains, Leif and David, did a great job of pushing everyone to improve and understand that they were going to be better in October than they were at the beginning of the season. To finish 6th at the state meet, with basically a new team, was an amazing achievement that most people will never see or understand how they worked to finish that high. The 2015 season for this group will be fun if they put in the same effort and desire that they did in 2014. The girls team came into the season as defending EDC champions, who placed 5th at the state meet, and returned all of their scorers. The expectations were high, which puts a new kind of pressure to perform well, all the time! Some teams will start to have internal drama, upset with who is top 5 and who is not, worried if someone new is going to jump up and take their spotlight. At practice and races this group of girls is the most supportive of each other than any other team I have ever had. They came to practice ready to work and have fun doing it. They understood completely what they had to do and just relaxed and did it each day. As the season went along and the victories kept happening, they took it in stride and understood they needed to keep improving still each race. Sometimes the hardest time to compete well is when its expected, and anything other than a "win" is a failure. This is a group of girls that love to train and compete, together, and 2015 the expectations will increase, and this group will smile and continue on and compete. PREP NOTEBOOK: Grand Forks Central already looking ahead to 2015 cross country season
By Greg DeVillers on Oct 31, 2014 at 9:19 p.m. The 2014 North Dakota cross country season concluded last Saturday. Already, Grand Forks Central’s girls team is looking ahead to 2015. The Knights matched the school’s best showing at the state meet, finishing second with 80 points behind champion Bismarck Century (65). The state meet will be in Grand Forks next season and, Central coach Sean Allan said, Central’s runners are looking at a run for the title. “That will be our goal,” Allan said. “We’ll return nine of our top 10 runners. The girls are already talking about next year. “That (a state title) was our goal this year. We made a great run at it. The girls weren’t disappointed getting second. But it’s a hard-working group. They’re already training for next year.” There is reason for that optimism. Karly Ackley became the first Central girl to win a state cross country title, and she’s only a sophomore. None of Central’s top five finishers at state — Ackley, Alexis Roehl (seventh), Mandy Williamson (12th), Grace Roehl (27th) and Rachel Torrey (33rd) — graduate next spring. The lone senior in the top 10 is Rachel Cox. Century, on the other hand, graduates two of its top five state placers, Jordan Jacob (sixth) and Jaiden Schuette (17th). Bismarck High, which finished third with 90 points, is like Central in that the Demons had only one senior in their top 10, with none of their top seven graduating next spring. “The main thing for us will be staying healthy,” Allan said. “And we have to get stronger and keep improving. “Our goal will be to get five in the top 20. Bismarck High will push us. But I think most of the girls improved their times by around 30 seconds from last year. If we can get 15 seconds faster, that will help us greatly.” Will that kind of improvement be enough to win a state team title? “I guess we’ll find out next year,” Allan said. One of our Central Parents made this awesome video of our team! Thank you!! ![]() For me, as a senior, State was a very bittersweet day. I never realized how sad I would be at the end of my last official Cross Country race. When I first joined as an 8th grader, I still thought Cross Country literally meant running across the country. But I joined nonetheless on that first day of June and have never stopped loving it every second after. Cross Country has changed my life. And definitely for the better. I have made so many friends, discovered new things about myself, and accumulated a whole new family. Never in a million years would I have thought a team would become so much more. The state meet, like I said earlier, was bittersweet. The team did very well! Three GFC girls got All-State honors, Karly: 1st place, Alexis: 7th place, and Mandy: 12th place. This is the most amount of girls we've had on the State podium ever since I've been running for Central. We also got 2nd as a team, and I could not be prouder of my girls! We went out and did what we were supposed to do. We ran our hearts out. I'm glad to have been apart of a team that works so hard for something they love. I will miss them all. This will forever be apart of my life. Rachel Cox - Senior Captain The state meet is my favorite and least favorite day of the year. It's my favorite because all the hard work most of us have been putting in since June has been for this day. It's my least favorite because it means that the official season is over. And it marks the beginning on the most boring period of the year. The time between Cross country and Track. The state meet in Minot was a huge success for the team. The weather was perfect it was about 58 degrees with little wind. There was a lot of PR's. The trademark icon of the Minot meet is a ginormous hill that the boys have to conquer twice in the meet and the girls once. Three weeks ago when we came to the Minot course for the pre-state race the hill was the most feared thing that we talked about. I remember when I ran it a few weeks ago, after the first time I ran it I spent the entire rest of the race dreading running up it the second time. This time when we ran it at the state race the hill seemed to barely phase me. I think it defiantly helped us that we already ran on the same course earlier in the year There is no greater feeling then the rush of excitement you get standing on the line with all the faster runners in the state looking right and left, wondering were you size up against the hundreds of runners on the line. The gun goes off and the battle begins. The greatest battle of the year, fighting against everyone who in their peak of fitness. The feeling of being on that battlefield is a feeling that I wish every human could experience because of the utter intensity. I was impressed with the way all of our boys ran and I have high goals for us next year. Of the boys running in our top 10 only one of them is graduating. We were really close to a top 5 finish this year and I think if all of the returning boys work hard we can get a top 5 finish next year. I can't wait until next season! Leif Larsen - Jr Captain It was a beautiful 60 degree October day and the Central Boy's and Girl's came to Minot to run. Sixteen of the seventeen runners that competed in the Pre-state meet in Minot two weeks ago ran faster at the State Meet on the same course. That is better than any coach could hope for, our team went out and COMPETED!!
The day started with the girls team, who have spent most of the season ranked either 2nd or 1st in the coaches poll, running first at 2:15 pm. Sophomore Karly Ackley, ranked #2 individually, took the lead about 600 meters into the race and never gave it up. Karly crossed the 4k finish line in 13:57 to hold off a hard charging Bismarck runner to win the individual state title! She is the first Central Girl Cross Country runner to win a individual state title. Eighth graders Alexis Roehl and Mandy Williamson showed that Central's future is going to be exciting with their all-state finishes of 7th and 12th respectively. Junior Grace Roehl finished aggressively to earn 27th, followed by freshman Rachel Torrey in 33rd place to give the girls a total of 80 points, earning them a 2nd place finish over all, behind Bismarck Century's 65 points. Our lone Senior runner Rachel Cox finished her career with her highest state finish of 36th place. Other Central girl finishers were Junior Maggie (Maxi) Powell 105th, eight graders Lexi Spinetta 106th, Aislinn Hunter 108th, and seventh grader Megan Peck 116th. The boys entered the state meet with a single goal, to get their young team with only one senior runner, on the podium. This year we brought a team that only had three previous state meet participants. A top five finish was a lofty goal, especially since they placed 5th at the EDC meet just two weeks earlier. The boys lined up and easily ran their best team race of the season, and placed 6th place overall with 207 points, just 14 points behind Minot's 5th place finish of 193 points. Junior Leif Larsen battled side aches to achieve his all state honors with a 7th place finish. Junior David Hettich used his strong aggressive start to also earn all state honors with 17th place. Senior Shay Doward made his last race count by PRing and placing 40th, 85 places higher than last years state meet. The rest of the boys were first time state runners and did a great job of competing on such a big stage. Sophomore Richie Osborn had a great first state meet placing 47th, followed by another Sophomore Zach Nelson finished 96th,, Eight grader Cole Oen 141st, Sophomore Cedric Reese 144th, Juniors Ryan Keogh 149th, Darian Colgrove 159th, and Eighth grader Chris Demuth 162nd. The North Dakota Cross Country State meet is my favorite sporting event of the year. I have been part of it as a runner and coach for the last 34 years. I still get those butterfly's and rush of excitement every time, like it was my first time. Cross Country is such a pure sport, no artificial surface, no equipment, just a group of ten runners looking to see if they can run over grass, hills, in any weather, to see which team is faster. Please notice I mentioned ten runners, not an individual. There is a individual champion, and Central has been fortunate to have several of boys win that title. But to us the team is the most important, how that group succeeds is most important. That is what we train for, talk about, and set as a goal, "how well can our team do?". An individual champion is great and a very special accomplishment, but to me the best part is that they provided their team with a single point, and that is the best any teammate can do, to help their team win.
We (Central), has had our share of success at the state meet. Sometimes the best accomplishments are done by teams that don't necessarily win a team title, sometimes it was a greater challenge for a team to earn that 3rd or 5th place trophy. They have reached past what many thought was possible. We have also had our share of heartbreak, teams losing a state title by one point, teams not placing in the top 5 when that was a goal. Sometimes those loses make you wonder why you trained so hard, sacrificed your free time to train, ate correctly, or go to bed early. And the answer is that you want to compete, you want to be part of a team, that moves past just being a team but forms its own special family. And with that family you that you want to see how good that team can be. Many people are willing to say they can do something, but few are willing to actually put the effort in and try. Failing is scary, but not trying, not seeing what you are capable of should be a greater fear. Many people will not join because they are scared of failing, and yes falling short of your goals can be disappointing, But not trying, not seeing what you are capable of, not challenging yourself should be a greater fear. Our team has over come that fear, has set high goals, and expects a lot of themselves and they depend on their teammates to do their best. That TEAM goal, lining up with them and seeing if they can accomplish a goal that they set together, trained for together, and sacrificed in a race over a simple grass course, that is why we do it, that is our challenge and this coming Saturday Central will line up and compete together. |
NEW Google drive to share pictures:
Parents please feel free to share. trade, and copy your Track & field pictures Google Drive AuthorVarious people will write about what is happening with the teams. Coach Allan and captains will be regular contributors. Alumni and parents are also welcome to submit entries. Archives
March 2024
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