Harlan Community Girls’ XC Continues to Close The Gap After Win at Storm Lake

Harlan Community Girls’ XC Continues to Close The Gap After Win at Storm Lake –

(9-19-24) – Cyclone girls’ cross country showed why they’re the No. 4 team in Class 3A with a team victory at the Storm Lake meet with 52 points.

Harlan Community Cross Country Coach Zach Klaassen likes how the runners on his girls’ team are doing their best to keep up with top-ranked runner Lindsey Sonderman and close the gap to get team wins.

“I thought they ran well. Lindsey got out and went, but she's not slowing down and the other ones are getting faster, too, trying to keep that gap between (runners) 1 and 5, you know, and trying to close that window every meet and get a little bit smaller and shrink it down.”

For Klaassen, the time for improvement is during practice.

“You got to do it in practice. You can't just work on closing those gaps in races, so you know the days that we practice, whether it be long intervals or it be a longer route run. We got to keep the runners close. They got to be in eyesight and if you let them go then it's going to be easy to let them go during the race. You just gotta mentally stay in there every day and just stay strong.”

It’s the 4th team win of the season for the Cyclones. MOC-Floyd Valley was 2nd with 60 pts with Unity Christian 3rd, scoring 79 pts.

Harlan Community boys’ cross country had a rough road at Storm Lake as they finished 10th with 243 pts. Klaassen feels his boys are battling despite dealing with some recent adversity.

“We're just kind of going through a rough stretch right now. We've just got some illness running through, a little bit of injuries here and there, but I think the one thing that we are doing is we're competing. I think we're closing some gaps, too. So that helps.”

Next up for Cyclone cross country is a trip to Neola for the Tri-Center Cross Country Invitational 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