As the Fillmore Central Cross Country team prepares for the state meet this coming Friday, October 21st, we take a look at their incredibly successful season.
The 2022 Cross Country season has been filled with several positive memories and high athletic achievement. There are a total of 11 athletes competing in high school cross country at Fillmore Central, 10 boys and 1 girl. These athletes have been running on their own throughout the summer since July, and have been training as a team since August 1st, when fall sports seasons officially began. As a team, these 11 athletes have run over 2,300 miles collectively. They sacrificed their Saturday mornings to meet as a team and complete long runs. Coach Smith commented, “This was something we wanted to instill in the program. We wanted to instill what it takes to be great. It takes sacrifice and commitment to be great. This group has bought into that and it’s paid off. This is now going to be our tradition- a tradition to do what it takes to be great.”
On the girls side, Hallie Verhage has consistently been in the top 15 individual medalists at almost every meet. Hallie finished 7th overall in the Conference meet, and recently finished 10th overall in an extremely difficult district meet to qualify her to run at the state meet in Kearney this coming Friday. This is the second year in a row Hallie has qualified for state.
The boys team has also had much success this season. As a collective group, the boys finished 2nd at the Superior Invite, 1st at the Fairbury Invite, 3rd at the York Invite, and 5th at the Fillmore Central Invite during the regular season of competition. The boys also brought home the Conference Runner-Up plaque finishing in second place as a team, and most recently, finished 3rd as a team in district competition, qualifying the entire boys team for state competition this Friday in Kearney. At districts, Travis Meyer finished 10th, Cooper Schelkopf finished 11th, and Ashtin Clark finished 12th to highlight the individual medalists for the Panthers.
“As we wrap up the season, Coach Mrs. Smith and I are looking forward to building off the expectations and accomplishments this team bought into. We are really excited to continue to build the Cross Country program at Fillmore Central and we are eager to expose the youth to the experience of running and competing.”