Cyclone XC Teams Putting Together Special Seasons

Cyclone XC Teams Putting Together Special Seasons -

(9-10-26) – It’s been an excellent start for Harlan Community Cross Country.

The Cyclones got an early start Tuesday when they participated in the Clarinda Invite. The Cyclone girls’ got the overall team win with 43 pts while the Cyclones boys’ finished 5th overall with 96 pts, helped by a terrific run by Jeffery Gross.

Harlan Community Cross Country Coach Zach Klaassen was happy with his team’s results in Clarinda after the last-minute change from their regularly scheduled LeMars event.

“We didn’t race last week,” said Klaassen regarding the decision to run at Clarinda Tuesday. “We wanted a week to train and get things done. Although we didn't get done as much as we wanted to with all the heat, but it worked out for us.”

Ashlyn Rau was 3rd overall with a time 21:36.88. Klaassen hopes Rau’s success will go a long way for his junior runner.

“She's working really hard. Hopefully (Tuesday’s) race gave her some confidence, kind of like to see her attack that middle of the race a little bit harder. She had a good last mile for sure. I would say was probably her best mile.”

Julia Heslink, who was 4th with a time 21.53.60, ran well despite dealing with an illness.

“I know Julia was struggling to breathe. She's kind of been battling some illness along with Ava Friend, but just gutted it out and got through the race.”

Aspen Bieker was 8th, Sadie Alberti 15th, and Josie Sonderman 18th.

On the boys side, Gross was your individual winner with a time of 17:06.10, just over 2.5 seconds ahead of Riverside’s Owen Fenner.

“Jeffrey made his move at the two mile mark right around there and kind of established 15 second gap I would say is probably where he kind of jumped out in that first 800M of the last mile and then I'd say about 400M left he was up about 10 seconds and Fenner made his move kind of like he did at Glenwood and Jeffrey just had enough on him where he couldn't quite catch him this time so that was good to see.”

Nathan Sandquist was 38th, Reagan Christensen was 49th, and Daniel Kay finished 61st for the Cyclones. Klaassen is hoping to get his back end runners closer to the front of the pack for better team results.

“We need to get out in that first mile and just be confident in their ability to hold on. This kind of seems like we get towards the back third of the pack and then we try to work our way through a bunch of people to pick up positions. So if we could get ourselves in that top half at least, I think then we could really start to score a little bit better as a team.”

Riverside boys’ were your team winner with 43 pts.

Cyclone Cross Country will look to continue their early-season success when they run at Storm Lake on Tuesday.

View past scores by visiting the Iowa High School Athletic Association's website, Iowa Girls High School Athletic Union website,
or Iowa Quik Stats