Naethan Hoaglund is new to Hartley-Melvin-Sanborn Cross Country. A good share of his runners are not. The first year XC coach is being welcomed by senior returnees Aiden Bush, Damian Dodge, Blaine Finster, Moises Gonzales, Ryan Grotluschen, Kamryn Ebel and Gracie Knobloch. The team also includes junior Carter Dolphin, sophomore Easton Teal and freshmen James Carlin and Karter Zimmer.
Joining the freshmen as newcomers is junior Simone Dellavedova, a foreign exchange student from Italy. “He didn’t run a whole lot in Italy,” said Hoaglund last week. “It’s something he wanted to try out and he’s looked pretty good for us so far these first six practices which has been awesome.”
The seven returning boys were part of team that won last year’s War Eagle Conference championship. The coach sees that they are hungry to repeat. “I took the boys down to a running camp south of Des Moines,” said Hoaglund. “A lot of the conversations were that they want to get back to that stature again. A core group of them put in a lot of miles individually this summer so they’re hungry for it. They want to get back there. But they also know that it’s not just one of those things where we can show up and do it. We’ve got to put the work in. Thankfully, so far, through six practices and a few summer workouts they’ve been really working hard.” The coach went on to say, “They understand what it takes. It’s my job to push them into that direction and provide programming and practices that are going to get the best out of them.”
Hoaglund’s background in cross country had been limited to helping at meets and being a spectator. One of his relatives who happens to be a cross country coach suggested people to follow on social media and different communities and opportunities for reading up and networking among coaches. “From there I just kind of found what made sense to me and kind of dove in and have really researched different ways of training and programming to try to get the kids to respond and that’s going to get the most out of the kids by the end of the season,” explained Hoagland. “This was, I thought, a cool opportunity and something that I’m, so far, really enjoying.”
Hoaglund talked further about his approach as someone new to the program. “A lot of what we’re doing this year is different than the previous year,” he noted. “They had great success last year and we want to build off that success. But this approach is less about the overall miles in a week that you get and more time based which allows me to tailor it to various runners across the board, runners that are first time out that have never run before to the four-year cross country runners who have a little bit more of an aerobic capacity. So I’m tweaking some things there. We’re doing some different things post-run in practice in order to keep our aerobic capacity high without having to log the miles because not only do we want to be running our best at the end of the season, we want ourselves to be healthy and injury-free at the end of the season. We feel like this approach takes miles off of their legs but still allows us to train the heart and lungs and aerobic capacity.”
The coach says he is relying on his veteran runners for input on routes to run and in being honest as to when they are hurting. “So far these seniors and older kids have done a good job of leading, kind of pushing me the right direction at the same time so I think it’s a good relationship that we have so far,” offered Hoagland.
Two of those seniors, Ebel and Knobloch, will not have the opportunity to achieve team goals. So what is the emphasis in their training? “For them it’s, number one, can you race and beat your previous self?” said their coach while noting that a particular course and the elements may make a PR more difficult. He added, “I feel that cross country is the ultimate ‘control what you can control’ sport in terms of getting your sleep, getting your hydration and what you’re putting into your body. You can’t rely on anybody else, especially with the girls, if you don’t have enough to score as a team. Then it just comes down to you versus you. That’s really what we’re focusing on. We want to become strong runners. If we can’t beat our previous score, can we feel like we finished strong and run with confidence. So there are things, regardless of sport, regardless of time, that we can focus on. Sometimes it’s just feeling better about your pace, breaking down first mile versus third mile pace and were we consistent. So those little things like that, little carrot at the end of the stick to motivate them, to give them something to chase.”
It’s a different situation for the boys where there are enough runners to fill a team with some left over. Who is running varsity and who runs JV was yet to be determined when the coach made his comments. “That’s one of the things, being a new coach, that I haven’t quite figured out yet,” admitted Hoaglund. “So far we’ve only done different tiers of timed runs. We haven’t done any time trials. The first one that we’ll have is this coming Friday (August 23). I have a good idea of 1-2-3-4, but after that it’s kind of wide open. We’ll find out more as we get through some time trials in practice and through some of the first meets.”
Even a coach new to cross country is not immune from being asked to forecast who will be be the top teams in the War Eagle Conference this season. “I haven’t looked at the girls very much at all, but the boys I have looked at,” said Hoaglund. “George-Little Rock/Central Lyon has got a lot of kids returning. Hinton’s got pretty much everybody coming back. One of the kids who placed top in the Conference Meet last year is from Trinity, Carter Westra. He’s going to be a senior this year. He’s a tough runner. So the top two teams, other than us, I would say would be George-Little Rock/Central Lyon and Hinton.”
Stated aspirations among the Hawk boys in particular include not just a War Eagle repeat but qualifying for the State Meet as well. Their coach reminds them that talk is cheap. “My mantra isn’t really talking about it,” shared Hoaglund. “I want you show me. Desire is measured by behavior. It’s measured by action. It’s real easy to say you want those things but you’ve got to show me you want it, show me every day by how you come out on the track and warm up, how you finish our workouts, how you race and finish races. That’s ultimately going to get you to where you want to be.”
Hoaglund expressed that short-term success this year would include the runners getting better each time out. He noted that it would not always by reflected in their times. “I’m really big on awareness while you run, feel while you run,” revealed the coach. “Did you feel better? Did you feel stronger? Did you feel faster?” Long-term, Hoaglund would like to grow the number of cross country runners, particularly on the girls’ side, along with retaining the underclassmen the next year. “If we tie in the junior high a little bit with Janet Prins, she’s the junior high coach, and kind of build that camaraderie at meets and we get the older kids at the end of the junior high race to cheer them on and kind of build that culture, we can accomplish that and get a lot of kids out for cross country.”

HMS Cross Country Schedule

Coach: Naethan Hoaglund
(All meet times 4:30 p.m. unless otherwise indicated)
Thursday, Aug 29, at Cherokee (Cherokee Golf & Country Club)
Thursday, Sept. 5, Iowa Great Lakes Invitational, at Spirit Lake (Brooks Golf Club)
Tuesday, Sept. 10, Sibley-Ocheyedan Invitational, at Sibley Golf and Country Club
Tuesday, Sept. 17, Chris Smith Invitational, at Sioux Rapids (Little Sioux Country Club)
Monday, Sept. 23, HMS Invitational, Sanborn Golf and Country Club
Thursday, Sept. 26, at Sioux Center (Dordt University)
Monday, Sept. 30, at Alta (Alta Golf and Country Club)
Thursday, Oct. 3, Wolverine Invitational, at Paullina Golf Club
Thursday, Oct. 10, George-Little Rock Invitational, at George (Otter Valley Country Club)
Thursday, Oct. 17, War Eagle Conference Meet, at Marcus Golf Club, 4:00