Published: Sept. 2, 2014
Spartans show they’ve still got it
West takes 2nd out of 19 teams
By NICHOLAS DETTMANN
Daily News
West Bend West is not ready to be counted out.
And after Saturday’s performance at the Jamie Block
Cross-Country Invitational, the Spartans’ boys program believes it showed it
shouldn’t be.
The Spartans finished second out of 19 teams, some of which
are among the top teams in the state.
One of those teams was Green Bay Preble, which won the team
boys competition.
East’s boys team was 15th.
A second-place showing by the Spartans was definitely
something to be excited about, especially with it being the first meet of the
season.
“They did everything we asked them to do,” West boys coach
Scott Hammer said. “We didn’t expect them to run (personal- record) times today
in the first race of the year, but it was nice that we got a few.”
It was an important meet for the West boys. For the
Spartans, they went into the meet, the season, looking to see if it could
continue its run of success.
Out of the picture are All-State competitors Alec and Aric
Miller, who are now at Marquette University on scholarships.
Alec Miller won the WIAA Division 1 1,600-meter run state
championship last spring. He was also twice the Daily News’ Boys Track and
Field Athlete of the Year (2013 and 2014), and was the 2012 Boys Cross-Country
Runner of the Year.
And Aric wasn’t too shabby either for he was the 2013 Daily
News Boys Cross-Country Runner of the Year.
Hammer said before the season he believed the Spartans
wouldn’t take a step back. West needed Saturday’s meet to find out where it was
compared to the end of last season. As it turned out, they are still in stride.
“It means that we still have what we had last year,” West
junior Matt Stoll said. “Just because we lost a lot of people and what we had
is gone, we’re still going to competitive.”
The event was broken into four races — a freshman and
sophomore, and junior and senior race for the boys and girls. The top 15 in
each grade level received medals.
In the freshman division, West’s boys team placed three in
the top seven and four in the top nine in the junior division “It’s nice to
have that young talent,” Stoll said.
Stoll was third in his division to lead the train of West
runners that cracked the top nine. Behind him were Jordan Gehrke, Max Hardy and
Thomas Eichner.
“Matt Stoll stepped up and had a lifetime PR,” Hammer said.
“That’s fantastic, getting that in your first race out as a junior. I’m looking
forward to see what he, Jordan, Max and Thomas can do moving forward.”
West freshman Luke Guttormson took first in the division,
beating the secondplace freshman finisher by more than 25 seconds. His time of
17:19.13 was the thirdquickest among all of the West boys runners.
“That was a fantastic surprise,” Hammer said. “We’ve got a
good core varsity team. We’re going to build off of this moving forward.”
Peyton Janto was fourth and Roman Skurek was seventh in the
freshman division as well for West.
The hope for West was to be in the top five in the
standings.
“We just wanted to make sure that we were starting off where
we left off last year for the guys that returned,” Hammer said. “If we could do
that, it means we had a successful offseason and it looks to be where we’re at
right now.”
East was led by sophomore Simon Daniels, who finished 13th
in his division.
“That was a nice surprise,” East coach Joe Bertsch said.
“But I was pleased with how everybody performed.”
It’s a young group at East with its top-seven runners being
underclassmen, and the Suns lost their top runner from last year, Brett Laufer.
“I’m looking for people to step up,” Bertsch said. “We had a
real successful summer running program. We’re just excited to see what
emerges.”
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