Junior Ethan Delibertis and freshman McKenzie Miller were named the Outstanding Boy and Girl for the Sweet Home cross country program’s 2022 season Tuesday, Nov. 14, at a season-end pizza feed.
Coach Dave Martin said this year was unlike any other in his 40-plus years of coaching at the high school and college levels.
“I have never had a year like this year,” Martin told the crowd of team members and their families. “I say that not because it was good or bad compared to others. It was just the most weird year.”
Not only was this the least experienced team Martin has ever coached, he said – 10 of his 12 runners had never competed before in cross-country.
It was also the first time he’d coached dual-sport athletes in cross-country, and he had five on the team at various points in the season.
“Getting used to how you deal with people who aren’t always, 24/7, into the sport, that was a challenge,” Martin said. As it turned out, he added, it was a good experience, he said, with good communication about athletes’ needs and
making adjustments accordingly.
Plus, he said, he had his firstever assistant, Andrew McIntyre.
“I don’t think I’ve ever had that situation before,” Martin said.
“So we kind evolved with that as we went along, in terms of how we’re going to do this.”
The biggest challenge, though, was the fact that he had a team of cross-country rookies with the exception of seniors Adrian Kast, who had run as a freshman, and senior Meeja Bitter.
“From a coaching perspective, I’ve coached people who’ve been state champions and I’ve coached national qualifiers when I was coaching college people over the last 15 years, and it’s like ‘What do you do with people who have no idea what you’re talking about?’ We had to start from scratch.”
The Huskies, though, “accomplished some amazing things,” Martin said, noting that he was delighted to have enough runners on both the boys and girls sides to field scoring teams.
“We had full teams,” he said, thanking parents who encouraged their kids to compete in the sport. “Last year they had four, total.”
His 12 runners posted a total of 22 personal bests, averaging roughly two per runner, in four 5K-distance
races, seven of them posting personal bests of two minutes or more between their first and last runs at that distance.
Plus, he said, the girls were seeded sixth but placed fifth at districts, behind big PRs from three runners. “That’s pretty impressive.”
Martin urged the team to keep running on their own, especially in the summer, and to recruit more participants for the program.
“If we have 16 or 20 people next year, it’s going to be more fun,” he promised.
Also, Martin predicted, if his runners get more miles in before next fall, they will improve.
“I’m not talking just little improvements,” he added. “People who were running 24 (minutes) this year, I think, will run 21 or 22. Two or three minutes. Not a question in my mind that it’s going to happen.”
Miller, Martin said, in handing out the Oustanding Runner awards, was a sprinter in junior high track last year and “she is super competitive. She loves to win.”
Despite having trouble understanding pacing, Miller was the girls top runner in their last three races and finished 10th in the district.
Delibertis, Martin said, did something he’d never seen: win the first two cross-country races he’d ever run. While both were junior varsity events, which Martin had entered most of his team in because they’d never run before, Delibertis “won easily” and later ran the fastest 5K on the boys team.
The junior, he said, is a “natural” runner and despite getting sick late in the season and being unable to perform well at district, Martin said Delibertis has the potential to be the team’s top runner next year.
Junior Rylee Markell was voted Toughest Runner by her teammates and Martin said he agreed with that choice.
“In every race she challenged herself,” Martin said, adding that he gave Markell “a big challenge”
in the district race, to catch some Cascade runners that, he said, were likely doing three or four times the mileage Markell has been able to do on morning runs, since she was also playing soccer.
“She chased them down for as long as she could. She was within seconds,” he said. “It was a great race. She was supposed to be 20th on the form chart coming in and she finished 17th.”
Most Inspirational went to Kast, who posted a big PR at the district race and, Martin said in introducing the senior, “he handles challenges really well.”
Most Improved were handed out by McIntyre, who noted that he had a “unique vantage point” in running with the team himself in practices.
“So I didn’t just see their times improving as the season went on, but I got to see how they improved,” he said. “I got to see how their attitudes improved, how their mental fortitude and toughness, and overall all-around ability as a cross-country runner.”
The girls honoree was sophomore Natiyah Walters-Koenig, who, McIntyre said, ran a time at districts that represented a 2:20 personal best between her first effort at the 5K and her last – “a pretty dramatic increased from beginning to end of the season,” he said. “Which is pretty awesome.”
The boys winner was junior Will Jewell, who also ran a big PR at district to finish the season with an over-three-minute improvement in his 5K time.
“Your ability to pace yourself just naturally is pretty incredible and seeing that consistency, even in our runs or even seeing the way you keep up with (teammate) Vegas (Mauer) in workouts, that was pretty impressive and also pretty inspiring,” McIntyre told Jewell.
Senior Meeja Bitter, who was not present at the event, is receiving her third letter in cross-country.
First-year letters on the boys side went to Delibertis, Jewell, Kast, Mauer and freshman Jim Morgan, who was one of the team’s top runners throughout the season. Girls who received first-year letters were Peyton Markell, Rylee Markell, Miller, Amelia Sullens and Walters-Koenig.