Wauzeka-Steuben Cross Country

Strong showing by Hornet runners at sectional

The Wauzeka-Steuben Hornets cross country team had a strong showing at the Division 3 Sectional Championship Meet at Fennimore on Saturday, Oct. 22.

The Hornets ran at Fennimore earlier this season at the Golden Eagle Relays so they were familiar with the course. The WSHS coaches challenged their runners to improve on their earlier Fennimore course times by 30 to 60 seconds and most of the athletes were up to the challenge.

Tyler Walters was the first Hornet to come into the chute in 26th place at 19:01; a 38 second improvement over his earlier time. Drew Zimmerman came in 50th, Hunter Marfilius was 65th, Jacob Reichmann was 71st with Gabe Martin right behind him in 72nd. Gabe improved his earlier Fennimore time by an incredible 2:05. Jacob Pitzer and Adam Martin rounded out the Hornet effort coming in 85th and 91st, respectively.   Overall, the boys team finished in 10th place out of the 18 schools that had boys running. 

For the Lady Hornets, Cherish Marfilius finished 54th improving her earlier time by 1:08 and Molly Asleson came in 71st bettering her previous time by 1:53.

Fennimore hosted a well run meet on a challenging course. There were a total of 20 schools at the meet with some coming from as far away as Waterloo.  

On the boys side, last year’s state boys champion Darlington won the meet with Wisconsin Heights/Barneveld as runner up. On the girls side, the Darlington girls also won with Albany finishing second.  Good luck to these teams and all individual qualifiers at the state meet on Saturday.

Cross country is a relatively new sport for Wauzeka-Steuben. Their first year was 2014 when they ran that year as a club sport and the brave few that joined that year learned much. Last year was their first year as a WIAA team and numbers increased as did their success.

This year, the high school boys numbers are up from nine to 14 and 2016 has also seen the addition of the first three high school girl runners for Wauzeka-Steuben. 

Cross country has also been well represented in the middle school with three dedicated girl runners and two talented boy runners.

The teams have worked harder than ever this year running hill repeats, mile intervals, fartleks, tempo runs and long runs with some easy recovery runs sprinkled in for good measure. This has translated to success at meets, high team placings and one invite win for the boys high school squad along with several individual medals and ribbons.  The girls have likewise tasted success with great performances that have also resulted in several medals.

The middle school boys and girls have also run courageously. These athletes are young but have really shown their mettle. They ran some very challenging courses against older competition but always ran strong and proud. These athletes will make a welcome addition to the high school teams in a couple of years.

There have also been some setbacks on all of the teams as they have not been without injury and illness but all of the affected athletes have battled through to the best of their abilities.

The Division 3 Sectional meet was Saturday, Oct. 22 at Fennimore and the Hornets finished with a superb showing.  

Looking further forward, the 2016 Wauzeka-Steuben cross country teams have just scratched the surface of their potential. The Hornets are a young team that should return some of their fastest runners on all teams next year.  

In fact, 2017 will be the first year that the Hornets will have experienced four-year seniors on the team. This added year of experience for all of the runners should result in the most successful season that this new team as ever had.