Although new to the high school level, the seven runners joining the Hartley-Melvin-Sanborn Cross Country group make it possible for the Hawks to put together teams for both boys and girls competition. Senior Aiden Jensen is a giving cross country a try and HMS also welcomes four freshman boys: Aiden Bush, Damian Dodge, Blaine Finster and Ryan Grotluschen. Joining the Hawk girls are freshmen Kamryn Ebel and Gracie Knobloch.
Also moving up a level, so to speak, is Kyle Borchers, who moves from assistant coach to head coach. He said the decision to change titles was not a difficult one. “I was approached by Mr. Hemiller (HMS HS Principal),” Borchers explained. “There wasn’t a lot of thought to it. I love the sport and we have a great team. It’s fun hanging out with them so to jump up and be at that varsity capacity was pretty exciting.”
Borchers, who enters his sixth year with the program, is being assisted by Kirsten Taylor. “She’s new to the district this year,” said Borchers. “She’s one of the weight room coordinators, she’s doing this, she’ll be head girls track, she’s filling in, subbing, things like that to just kind of get a foothold, which is good.”
Being the leader of the program has allowed Borchers to push summer mileage. “What I really wanted to do, and it’s something we really haven’t implemented a lot of since I’ve been here at assistant coach capacity, is I’ve really wanted to get summer mileage going,” said the head coach. “It’s not mandatory or anything but just give them something organized that, ‘Hey, we need to get miles in during the summer.’ ‘Come here and here’s your opportunity to do that.’ So, we saw some success, maybe not as much as I wanted to, but definitely more success than we’ve had in the past couple years so I was happy about that. So I feel we have at least a good foothold for a couple of our returning runners coming into the season that can get some good PR’s and do some things that they maybe haven’t seen in the past couple years.”
The coach cited Madison Otto, Bryce Dodge and George Vargas as runners who put in summer work. “Madi is our lone senior for the girls,” noted Borchers. “She put a ton of miles in. She’s looking really good and she’s motivated. She’s definitely got her goal in mind which is getting to state, so that’s going to be really exciting. Bryce Dodge has probably got the most experience coming in (among the boys) and he’ll be a junior. He put a lot of miles in this summer so he’s looking good. George Vargas is going to be a sophomore, put a lot of miles in so he’s looking good too.”
Sophomore Gavin Faulkner returns for the Hawks and then there are the aforementioned frosh. “Maybe they’ve never run a 5K before because Middle School only does anywhere from 1.5 to 2 miles but we’ve got promise,” remarked Borchers. “We’re going to fill out a team so we’ll have a varsity score and that hasn’t always been the case around here so that’s exciting.”
Back at it again on the girls side are juniors Juliana Pasillas and Ashleigh Vermeer and sophomore Alexis Croatt. “They can be up there and they can be point scorers and can get our score really low,” Said their coach. “We’re still battling a little bit of those injuries we had last year, so that is a little worrisome, but if we can get healthy and stay healthy and start getting some solid workouts in, then, yeah, the girls team’s going to look really good too as a team. We got a couple of freshmen that I’m pretty excited about coming up, with Kamryn Ebel and Gracie Knobloch. We’ll see how they transition, and I know that can be nerve-racking but you’ve just got to get out there and do it and its going to hurt a little bit and that’s okay.”
Borchers has some help in deciding just when his inexperienced runners will compete at the varsity level. “Well, it depends on the meet,” noted the new head man. “Our first meet – Cherokee – different schools put different restrictions on it so I have to fill out a varsity roster before I can start throwing in JV. So if that’s the case, then yeah, we’re probably all going to run varsity and it’s going to be a trial by fire kind of thing. But, ideally, I’d like to get some of those freshmen who haven’t run a 5K or at least a lot of 5K’s – I’d like to throw them in that JV spot because it gives them a little confidence, but if it has to be all varsity, then that’s what we’re going to do and that’s going to make us tougher and better runners too, so we’ll just play it by ear.”
In addition to implementing summer mileage, Borchers is a proponent of athletes doing more lifting in the weight room. “And that’s just across the board athletics at HMS,” he noted. “We’re really trying to push for that through all of our athletics, but last year we had a couple athletes that got banged up with different joint issues or things like that and the weight room is a great cure for that so that is one of my big focuses. We’re going to lift. It’s not lifting for muscle mass or anything like that, it’s injury prevention. But I think that can help us out a lot.”
The distance runner, turned coach shared some thoughts on what he would like to see cross country athletes get out of the experenice. “For me, distance running was really beneficial when I was in high school and college because it teaches you to be kind of gritty,” said Borchers. “When you’re on a 5K run, everything in your brain is screaming at you ‘This hurts!, I want to stop, I need to walk’ so to have that mental toughness to push through that, I think that’s one of the main things that cross country, and running in general, teaches a kid. Those are huge life lessons for kids. Just because something’s tough doesn’t mean you have to quit, you can power through it, so that’s huge. That was one of my big takeaways as a kid into becoming coach.”
Borchers knows that increased success for the program this year is something in which the entire team can share. Said the coach, “I was looking at our conference standings from last year and they weren’t good. Let’s put it that way. And I would like to start edging up on that and place well or better as a team in some of these meets would be nice because, if you’re out there running alone and you’re trying to do your own goals, that’s one thing, but running as a team and doing things well as a team is one of the fun parts about cross country. Especially like 1A schools sometimes don’t get to do because they can’t fill out a roster or they just lack some of the talent. So I’d really like to place better as a team in some of these meets, but we’ll have to play it meet by meet.”
HMS will be seeing a number of ranked teams on the cross country schedule this season. “We always have teams that are going to pull us or going to push us, so that’ll be good,” remarked Borchers.
It has often been noted that the more one puts into any endeavor, the more one gets out of said endeavor. “We get it every year where we have kids who have put a bunch of miles in and kids that haven’t and that’s just part of the game,” explained Borchers. “But the ones that took summer mileage seriously, they’re looking really good right now and I’ve been impressed with that. We’re setting up to have a pretty good season especially with some of our individuals maybe looking at a chance to go to state and things like that.”