SPASH boys run at Nationals in Oregon
Portage County Gazette
By John Kemmeter
Members of the Stevens Point Area Senior High School (SPASH) boys cross country team competed at the Nike Cross Nationals (NXN) at Glendoveer Golf Course in Portland, Ore., Saturday, Dec. 7.
After qualifying for Nationals with a second-place finish at the Heartland Regional, the Stevens Point runners finished 21st in the team standings at NXN with 491 points, as Newbury Park (Calif.) had 128 points to edge Temecula (Calf.) (132) for the National Title.
“The guys enjoyed the experience, and the competition was incredible,” said 43rd-year SPASH boys cross country coach Donn Behnke, who was not allowed to coach the team after the WIAA season ended, but made the trip to watch with his wife and daughter. “We drive over to Wisconsin Rapids for the State Meet, and our longest road trip is a couple of hour drive, so this is not typical for us.
“We’ve had guys get to the Foot Locker individual race and we followed them, but for our group to take an airplane to get any place, it’s never happened before,” he said. “This was something completely new, and really unusual, but fun.”
The SPASH boys cross country team finished as the WIAA Division 1 Runner-up Nov. 2 to qualify for the Nike Cross Regionals (NXR) Nov. 10 in Sioux Falls, S.D., where the Stevens Point runners placed second among the top teams from seven states, to earn an automatic bid to Nationals for the first time in program history.
Just under a month later, the team from SPASH flew to Oregon, where the Top 22 teams in the nation, along with the Top 50 individual qualifiers, competed at NXN the morning of Dec. 7.
“It wasn’t like any meet I’d ever been to, and I’ve been to NCAA National Meets,” said Behnke. “But Nike really does it well.
“When you walk onto the course, it was sort of a Field of Dreams moment,” he said. “That’s the way I felt.”
In the race, junior Jake Bourget was 107th in 16:23 to lead Stevens Point, with senior Tristan Sernau 146th in 16:43.5, and senior Jake Lepak 148th in 16:44.2.
Sophomore Zach Scharbarth finished 161st in 16:51.4 and senior Christian Kizewski-Manthey was 175th in 17:04.6 to close the scoring for Stevens Point, while junior Josh Bourget was 177th in 17:06.4 and sophomore James Jacobs came in 181st in 17:09.2.
“When our guys got done after the race and it was pouring and it was cold, they came over and we found them, and it felt like a lot like after the State Meet, when we find our guys in the snow-fence area near the finish line,” said Behnke. “We knew that our guys hadn’t finished very high, but the fact is, those guys ran really hard and they ran really well.
“They gave their best effort, and we were very proud of them,” he said.
After setting the national record on a three-mile cross country course earlier this season, senior Nico Young of Newbury Park (Calif.) won the Individual Title at NXN in 14:52.3.
That led California Division 2 State Champion Newbury Park to the National Title with 128 points, as it beat the Temecula team from California Division 1 State Champion Great Oak High School (132) for the National Title one week after the teams ran at the California State Meet, while the Draper team of Coroner Canyon, Utah, (142) finished third (142) and St. Charles (Ill.) in fourth place (163).
Meanwhile, NXR Heartland Regional Champion Mounds View (Minn.) finished 19th with 415 points, and Stevens Point was 21st (491).
“The hard part for our guys was the four weeks in between the Regional and the National Meet, and we all knew that was going to be difficult, for them to continue training for an additional month,” said Behnke. “The weather wasn’t particularly good, and then of course they had to train entirely on their own, without any coach supervision.
“And I think they could’ve done that for another week or two, but a month was a lot to ask of them, and we saw it with all of the kids that came out of the Heartland Regional, they all struggled to run nearly as well as they had a month earlier,” he said. “Whereas some of the other programs, California in particular, that was certainly a better situation for some of those teams.”
The SPASH runners were interviewed live on the RunnerSpace.com webcast following the race, as the roughly 30 family members, SPASH junior varsity runners and friends who flew to Oregon to watch them run, were behind the team in the background.
“We had a lot of support from the parents and their teammates who managed to get out there,” said Behnke. “There was a pretty good mob of us, and after the race, the camera crew came over and they were on the jumbotron for a while, and that was really fun to see.
“It was really a good experience, I know our younger guys got a taste of this, and they’re already talking about going back next year, which of course is a very, very difficult thing to do,” he said. “But our guys were just really happy to be there, and we were happy to support them.”
Behnke said that what he’ll remember most about the team’s run to Nationals is the excitement that the guys had of earning the trip, and being able to compete with an elite group of the best teams in the country.
“Even after the race, when they were cold and wet, they were just smiling, and they were just so happy,” said Behnke. “And they turned and we got some pictures of them as they were getting interviewed, and I guess I’ll just hold on to that.
“What more do you want, for a group of young men to earn a trip like this, a chance of a lifetime, memories of a lifetime,” he said. “It’s something that, as a coach, I never thought I would be a part of, even though I’m not allowed to be much of a part of it. But I was so glad that I could be there to see our guys run at this highest level of competition.”