DASH High School and Middle School Cross Country 2015 Mayville Meet Report

September 13, 2015 in Cross Country, High School Cross Country, High School Cross Country Meet Reports, Middle School Cross Country, Middle School Cross Country Meet Reports

Hello DASH families,

The DASH cross country team competed in Mayville last Friday. It would be our first chance to see some of our exciting middle school athletes, and we would get to see our high school team run on a faster course in cooler conditions. Over 800 athletes total would be crossing the finish line, so we would have to be at our best to post the results we were looking for.

The middle school team, both boys and girls, got to the starting line first. Eleven boys and five girls wearing DASH yellow came out of box 17. DASH newcomer Vincent Mauer led our boys through the course, posting an impressive 13:38 time. Leif Kostrzewa and Joshua LeSac stuck together until the end with Leif coming in a fraction of a second ahead. Caleb Schaber looked good in his first DASH race. Caleb was followed by Daniel Caspers who also ran well. Three of our youngest competitors put on quite a display of racing. Seka Kostrzewa got ahead of Julianna Caspers and Nathanael Chu midway through the race and would not be passed. Julianna finished just ahead of Nathanael with all of them finishing in the 15:20’s. Rebecca Dickman started strong, but wasn’t right this time out, and faded down the stretch. Noah LaBonte is back with the team this year and gave us a good first race. Stephanie Chu was our third girl in. She will be one of our better runners this year. Joshua Lipski is much improved from last year, and it showed as he finished in 16:52. Savanna Bruton was not slowed by the long race and did very well in her first race. Ed Sherman’s training has been slowed by a concussion. He will be better later in the year. Bryant Farrell clearly enjoyed the long race and will only improve as the season goes along. Naomi Zhou made it to the line just in time and gave us a good finish. The middle school team is not in mid-season form yet, and we ran only about a third of the team, but the team is clearly much improved.

The high school girls team has been improving with each meet, and this was the day that everyone ran to their potential. Andrea Beck was back and was able to lower her time to 23:03. The goal is to to get the rest of the varsity girls’ times much closer to Andrea’s, and we were much improved in that area. Faith Caspers got out much faster this time and held her pace to the end to finish with a nice 24:17. Abby Chu kept Faith in her sight the whole way and posted a 24:20. Kayla Bruton moved up as the race went along and also went under 25 minutes with a 24:37. Kayla Walters just missed getting under 25 minutes by 5 seconds. Expect her to stay up near Faith and Abby in the future. That is what we will need from our girls as we start thinking about our homeschool championship meet just six weeks ahead. The good times did not stop there. Jessy Homa outkicked Zipporah Caspers when the finish line was in site, with both girls finishing in the low 26’s. Katrina Lipski cut off about 2 minutes from her first 5k race, giving us great results from all the girls. This team will end up very good. Time will tell just how good.

Twelve of our high school boys made the start. Jacob Dickman cracked the top-10 once again, this time coming in in 9th place with a 17:41 time. Justin Chu was not far behind Jacob after posting a personal best 18:14 time, good for 17th place. Joe Hughes has his time down to 19:02 as he continues to round into top form. Like he has done so many times before, Samuel Zinkgraf came through with a big race when we really needed it. Samuel moved up in the last mile to post a very nice 20:05 time and was our 4th runner in. Seniors John Sherman and John Kowalinski strided together the whole way, with John Sherman finishing just ahead. Joe Maurer completed our varsity team, finishing two spots behind John Kowalinski with his 20:46 time. We still had five more athletes to come which would comprise our JV team score. Timothy Kowalinski and John Klaves both ran hard, and gave us two more athletes under 21 minutes. John LaBonte came in with an impressive 21:04 time. That gave us seven athletes just 59 seconds apart. This team is very deep. Will Farrell got his time all the way down to 24:08. Will is running with much more confidence now. Joshua Schaber stayed steady until the end and also edged under 25 minutes. Our JV boys would finish 3rd overall. Our varsity team placed 6th out of 17 teams. Those were very good scores. Our boys will be tough to beat at our smaller meets ahead.

The high school team is really meeting expectations at this point in the season. Now we have two weeks between meets to work on our fitness, and be ready for our big meets ahead. Our times have been good, but we will need to get them even lower in the next six weeks to make this a championship caliber season. I am excited about it. I hope you are too!

Thanks to all who made the long drive to Mayville. I may look for a closer meet next year. We will see. Thanks to Ed and Mary Beck for getting times at the finish, and thanks to the people who helped me collect the cards. Fortunately, there were no issues with the scoring system, but we were ready just in case. Thanks to Ed Beck and Chuck Maurer for getting the mile splits. Thanks to Grace Zinkgraf, who was our photographer once again. You will definitely want to check out the photos to see how good we looked, and how much fun we had running this fast.

Take care,
Jim Caspers

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