The Ottertail Central Bulldogs opened up the cross country season against Wadena and United North Central in Menahga on Thursday, August 27th. Due to new regulations put in place by the MSHSL each meet can only have three total teams. An interesting stat is that the Bulldogs had 34 runners participating in their first ever cross country race, something you would not have thought watching the races as the Bulldogs were always towards the front of the pack.
“I was very impressed with our athletes ability to handle the nerves that come with the first race of the season.” Said first year head coach Brady Speicher. “Cross country is usually a sport where experience is crucial to success, today our athletes showed that running with confidence and a race plan will result in good things.”
The slate of races started off with Junior High Girls where the Bulldogs got edged out by one point to Wadena. The race was won by Kallyn Grove of OTC, in 12:46, who had a stellar last 200 meters to go from third to first. “Kallyn executed the race plan perfectly, we wanted the girls to go out conservative and with 800 meters to go start catching as many jerseys as they could, to kick off our season with an exciting win really got the momentum going for us.”
Next up came the junior high boys who absolutely dominated from start to finish. The Bulldogs took the top seven spots led by Kale Misegades who took the individual title in a time of 11:33. “Kale showed today that he will be a force to be reckoned with on the JH side of things, but it was really cool to see all the guys, Peter Newark, Talyn Setterholm, Bradyn Roisum, Dawson Bushman, Aiden Heggem and Gabe Lindstrom run as team to win the team title.
The JV races were both won by the Bulldogs. August Wicklund won the boys individual title in 23:47 while Liz Lukken took top honors for the girls in 25:26. The girl’s team won with a score of 17 by putting five runners, Liz Lukke, Reese Richards 25:30, Ezrah Baker 25:40, Brooke Hovland 26:00 and Becca Fredrick 26:08 in the top six places. “The JV ran awesome.” Spicher noted, “As this year progresses our varsity will only be as fast as the JV runners chasing them down for varsity spots. Today showed we are going to be very competitive for those top 7 spots.”
In the girls varsity race the Bulldogs took third with 48 points behind UNC with 40 and Wadena who scored 33. Faith Fischer led the way for a sixth place finish individually in a time of 23:27, followed by Jorja Gabrielson in eighth, Ady Tysdahl in ninth, Becca Johnson in 12th and Grace VanErp rounded out the five scoring positions with a 13th place finish. “The girls saw today what I think are the two best teams in our conference.” Speicher expectes by the end of the year the team will be running neck to neck with each other. “I like where we are at right now as a team, we have six weeks to get into top racing shape when we face these two again at conference.”
For the boys varsity race Issac Scherfenberg took the Individual title in 19:26.55 to help lead the boys team to a perfect score to win the meet. Blake Alonzo took second, Nick Carter took fifth, Noah Mansker sixth and Joseph Froslee took ninth. “The guys set the tone for this season that they are looking to do something special, today was a great starting point.” Speicher said. “Top to bottom every team showed signs of success today and that the hard work in practice is paying off. It is encouraging that we were able to come away with some wins but still see lots of room for improvement.”
The Bulldogs will take the course again Thursday, September 3rd, at the Battle Lake High School.
