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Knights, Eels advance onto regional with top-five finishes
Based on projections as well as what has transpired over the course of the high school boys cross country season, Terre Haute South was viewed as the heavy favorite to take Saturday afternoon’s Terre Haute North Sectional championship trophy back with them.
The question left to be answered was which four teams would be joining the Braves next weekend at the Brownsburg Regional.
Two of them will be making the trip from Clay County as Northview finished second, a place many anticipated the Knights occupying, and Clay City took third, leapfrogging Terre Haute North for the second time in as many years and the second time in school history.
“This is a great group of guys that believes in their work and believes in everything they’ve done. I know they wanted to be much closer to the top and possibly win this thing, but South has a really good team. I’m still proud of the guys. They all ran extremely well,” said Northview boys cross country head coach James Grounds.
“We’re super happy with where we finished, although I wouldn’t say it was because we ran our best today. But, hey, that doesn’t matter at this [time of the year],” said Clay City boys cross country head coach Cole Schroer. “Last year was the first time we’d ever beaten North and that wasn’t really on our radar today, so to beat them in two straight years is pretty awesome. A small school like us doesn’t usually do that too often.”
Northview was paced by Camden Johnson, who finished fourth with a time of 16:38 and put another exclamation point on the junior season that has seen him catapult himself into the conversation with the best individual runners in the Wabash Valley, an accomplishment that has been achieved with hard work and dedication, said Grounds.
“The three that beat him – South Vermillion's Karter Jackson, South Putnam's Gabriel Feltner and Greencastle's Landon Miller – have had great years. Both the first and second runners are blazing-fast 800 runners and the one that finished third finished 14th in state last year, so he was up against some really strong runners. But for him to just be up there with them is impressive because last year, he wasn’t this close to those guys and now he’s put himself in a place where he can go out there and compete with them and hang with them for the entire race,” said Grounds of Johnson. “He’s killed it this year.”
Behind Johnson was a convoy of Knights that included Connor Propst (8th with a time of 17:02), Daniel Russell (13th with a time of 17:40), Will Harms (15th with a time of 17:48), Noah Minett (16th with a time of 17:50), Seth Hendricks (17th with a time of 17:56) and Devin Jones (23rd with a time of 18:15).
A little farther back was a swarm of Eels led by Jayden Hickenbotham, who was battling an ailment but still managed to finish 24th with a time of 18:17. After Hickenbotham was the perfect example of what’s given Clay City so much success this season as Luke Swearingen (28th with a time of 18:53), Brady Hauer (29th with a time of 18:58) and Luke Laswell (30th with a time of 19:07) filed passed the finish line one after the other with Brayden Wiram (36th with a time of 19:25) and Alex Edwards (37th with a time of 19:28) on their heels, allowing the team to climb its way up the team standings.
“Nobody ran incredibly today, but we were packed together and our No. 5, 6 and 7 guys ran better than what their usual times are,” said Schroer. “Our depth is 100 percent our strength. We don’t necessarily have that low number, so when you can pack in your No. 3, 4 and 5 and then have your No. 6 and 7 be bumpers that pushes other team’s No. 5 back, that’s huge. That’s how we’ve had success.”
Both Northview and Clay City will now look towards next weekend’s Brownsburg Regional with similar aspirations on its mind – to record as many personal best times as possible while surpassing their expected spots among the other high-caliber teams.
“Camden is going to be on that fine line of making it [to state]. He could finish 13th or 14th or 15th or 16th or 17th. He’s going to have to get out there and be aggressive and try to compete,” said Grounds. “For the rest of them, it’s all about how much better can we do compared to what we’re supposed to do.”
“We’re not hoping to make it out. We don’t have many real team goals other than setting as many PRs as possible and sending our seniors out right,” said Schroer. “We finished last in the regional last year, so we’re definitely hoping to do better than that.”