By RYAN WALKER
No Wells County school ended up on top in the cross country Bi-County Conditioner Tuesday night at Norwell High School. It was Adams Central sweeping the day in both the boys’ and the girls’ races.
However, the Norwell girls’ and the Bluffton boys’ teams ended with a second-place finish at the meet.
The conditioner is an odd race in many ways. It’s not run with all the individuals running on their own for times and places per usual. Runners get into pairs with another teammate and in a relay race format, running a total of three miles each and six total. Each team will then take their top three pairs and combine the times together to determine the winners of the meet.
Another difference is that the race is run on a Tuesday, when events take place primarily on Saturday mornings. The oddity of the schedule has some of the coaches treating the race more like a practice, an annoyance, or both.
“We came into it not with fresh legs,” Norwell’s boys’ head coach Cody Hannie said after the race in regards to his team racing at Taylor University two days ago. “We’re obviously not training for this one. We have a bigger meet Saturday at Marion, so we did a workout yesterday, and we just used this as a workout.”
“I talked to a couple (of) coaches. Of course, I’d like to move it up,” Southern Wells boys’ and girls’ head coach Monica Edgeman said. “I feel like it’s a hard practice, and I feel like it a deserved hard practice like it earlier, and that competition is better than it is doing it at a school and just seeing everybody. We like to see all the other teams.”
“It’s always competitive when we’re in this space, but (it’s) definitely a training run,” Norwell girls’ head coach Vanessa Hannie said. “A training run with people, so it was more than just a training run. It was a run with competition.”
Some of the coaches admitted that the meet threw off their normal practice schedule. Cody Hannie shared that his team runs for speed on Monday, which is a similar workout to the Bi-County meet, followed by a longer run of close to an hour on Tuesday and a recovery run on Wednesday.
Considering the circumstances and wonky rules, most of the coaches were satisfied with the way their teams ran.
Michael Vanderkolk, Bluffton’s head coach, in particular, was happy the team finished second. Typically, the Tiger boys shoot for first, but he had two of his top six runners out with sickness and a precautionary injury, including perhaps the top runner at the meet, Tyler Godwin.
“When we compete, we want to compete to win,” Vanderkolk said. “We knew it was going to be tough without Tyler and Aidan Graves, two guys who have been in the top three pairs. So it always puts us back, so we really feel like getting second was kind of a big moment for us because it really shows us those 3-4-5-6 guys tonight who stepped up really went above and beyond and got some good times and good performances today.”
Vandekolk was also pleased with his girls’ team, along with the boys overall. He said that both hit their goal mile split times and even exceeded them in some areas.
Norwell’s girls’ team was the top in Wells County and second overall. Similarly to Bluffton, head coach Vanessa Hannie was also happy to see her team hit their goal mile markers and how they finished the race.
“I think they did an amazing job,” Hannie said. “They ran tough. They looked strong, and in each of the miles, not just strong in the first and then died in the last. That’s what our goal was today: to be more consistent and control the first and see what we can do in the last, and they did it, and they did it well.”
On the boys’ side for the Knights, Cody Hannie found the race to be productive despite it jumbling the week’s workouts around. He mentioned that cross country only gets to compete once a week, and it’s good to run with other competitors during the week.
“The guys went out and competed well, and we’ll always take that,” Cody Hannie said. “We obviously hope to always win or come out on top, but sometimes it doesn’t make sense to gear a week towards doing well when it can affect a meet that’s more important.”
For her Raiders, Edgeman was a little disappointed in the results from the meet in comparison to the last conditioner.
In the year prior, both teams finished better at the meet, but Edgeman knows her team this year could have done better and might have rearranged the lineup to help that.
“We were a little disappointed,” Edgeman said. “We didn’t maybe match up with everybody the way, knowing what we know now, the outcome should have been, ‘shoot, (I) should have picked that kid with that kid.’ … We have a better team this year than we did last year, but we had a better placing last year. You know, you just want to do better. We’ve got a lot of potential, let’s put it that way, but we just didn’t shine today.”
Norwell and Southern Wells will be at the Marion Invitational at Indiana Wesleyan University starting at 8:30 a.m. Saturday, Sept. 2.
Bluffton will be at the Manchester Invitational at Huntington University starting at 9 a.m. Saturday, Sept. 2.
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Team results
Girls
Adams Central first with a total of 2:05.00, Norwell second 2:06.16, South Adams, third 2:13.43, Bellmont fourth 2:19.48, Bluffton fifth 2:26.31, Southern Wells sixth 2:54.29
Boys
Adams Central first with a total of 1:46.10 2. Bluffton second 1:47.48, Bellmont third 1:47.56, Norwell fourth 1:48.16, South Adams fifth 1:48.21, Southern Wells sixth 1:49.11
Individual top pairs:
Wells County.
Girls
Only the top 10 pairs and Bluffton’s finishers were kept with names for results.
Norwell’s Haleigh Reinhard and Alana Cady third place with a time of 41:35.7, Norwell’s Brooklyn Meyer and Addison Meyer fourth with a time of 42:06.1, Norwell’s Ashley Waldman and Mariah Kline fifth with a time of 42:35.0, Norwell’s Elizabeth Norris and Kylee Hannie seventh with a time of 43:46.1, Norwell’s Teagan Lesley and Eden Nash 10th with a time of 45:00.6, Dakota Lee Reagan Harris 13th with a time of 46:40.2, Alydia Bertsch and Lucia Corkwell 16th with a time of 49:30.3, Amarah Robles and Kierstynn Reed 19th with a time of 50:20.6.
Boys
Bluffton’s Jude Baumgartner and Levi Johns first with a time of 33:20.9, Norwell’s Gage Reinhard and Gavin Threewits third with a time of 34:13.2, Southern Wells Joshua Bricker and Andrew Aker fourth with a time of 34:14.4, Norwell’s Elijah Jacob and Lukas Mashuda eighth with a time of 34:54.8. Grifin Linderwell and Ayden Teeple 13th with a time of 36:59.9, Jackson Rockwell and Brett Kuhlenbeck 15th with a time of 37:27.2, Manning Nash and Ryan Schlagenhauf 19th with a time of 38:46.7. Elliott Brown and Rhett Gerber 24th with a time of 41:14.6, Clayton Brubaker and Dalton Rodgers 27th with a time of 51:42.0.
