That Was Then, This is Now

We've thought about this race for a month. It's 9:59 on Saturday morning. It might rain, it might hold off, we don't care. In five seconds the gun fires and planning turns into action.
We face three difficult teams in Capitol Conference South: Deerfield/Cambridge, defending Conference Champions; Wisconsin Heights/Barneveld, State qualifier in 2016; and Marshall. Marshall beat us in every outing this season. We focus on Marshall. We wish redemption.
Eighty-two varsity runners pass the one-mile mark. Our Red and Blue New Glarus-Monticello uniforms are nicely mixed in the pack and surrounded by the Cardinal Red of the Marshall Cardinals. Spectators at a cross country meet may do as much hard breathing as the competitors and this is the case as we huff and puff to the two-mile mark. Marshall's been unable to shake us. NGM hangs on.
After three hard miles, the Conference race comes down to the last 200 meters. For unknown reasons, our NGM'ers own the sprints today. Conor McCoy (17:42) takes his Marshall guy by 16 seconds, Adam Nelson (18:11) finishes three seconds in front of the second Marshall, Rudy Wicker (18:39) sprints to a two second victory, then Ty Ready (18:51), Joe Quaglia (19:04) and Garrett Grossen (19:13) slam the proverbial door on the rest of the Cardinals.
Results are announced: Wisconsin Heights/Barneveld (47 pts.) winning and upsetting Deerfield Cambridge (55 pts.). Our 61 points puts us surprisingly close to the best in conference and clearly ahead of Marshall (83), Belleville (130) and Waterloo (140).
The New Glarus-Monticello girls tussle with Belleville every week and the Wildcats improve every time. Can we pull off another victory? Gabby Whisler (22:16) and Molly Molencamp (23:05) finish in front of B'ville's and Waterloo's first runner. Walela Three-Sticks (24:09) sprints in 24 seconds ahead of a pack that includes four Waterloos and five Wildcats. All we can do is yell for Libbie Melvin (27:18) and Emily Streiff (27:34) to keep the gap as low as possible. Two more Waterloos finish followed by our Dylan Noll (32:03) and Brooke Dreyfus (33:01). This will be close. Did Gabby, Molly and Walela give us enough of a lead to hold off those teams? Marshall (24 pts.) wins the conference, Wisconsin Heights/Barneveld (41 pts.) second and Deerfield/Cambridge (60 pts.) third. NGM (127 pts.) takes fourth place with Waterloo (133 pts.) fifth and Belleville (137 pts.) sixth. The B's get closer to us each week.
The Junior Varsity boys dominate from the beginning. Robert Burt (19:36), Kellan Zweifel (19:40) place 1 and 2. Simon Blohowiak (19:50), Griffin Ness (20:02), Ryan Austin (20:58), Lucas Fink (21:05) and Desi Delforge (21:09) finish 5th, 7th, 12th-14th. Tristan Flanagan (22:25) and Eric Zielinski (23:00) run their season best. The boys' score 25 pts. for first place in JV Capitol South.
On Saturday, October 21st, the varsity teams line-up at the Fennimore Sectional CC race. Two teams earn a berth to the State Meet in each race. We all expect highly ranked Darlington to win the boys' race. A week ago, Boscobel and Marshall were favored to be fighting for the second spot. Today our guys changed that equation. The Fennimore Sectional just added another ^possible^" and they wear Red and Blue."