Harriers Ready For Sectional

When the area cross country teams head to their sectional sites on Saturday at 9 a.m., they will be going to familiar territory.

Warsaw and Wawasee will be running at Ox Bow Park in Elkhart, which is also the host site of last weekend's Northern Lakes Conference meet and next weekend's regional. Tippecanoe Valley and Whitko join Manchester on the Squires' home course, which also hosted last week's Three Rivers Conference meet.

"It is a tough course," Warsaw boys' coach Jeff Grose said of Ox Bow Park.

The Ox Bow course weaves runners around the state park located just off U.S. 33 north of Goshen. The challenge for the runners is the series of hills and trees to run over and around.

Warsaw gets plenty of chances to run on the course, with the NLC, sectional and a regular season matchup with Concord being run there.

"We are here a lot," Warsaw girls' coach Paul Sibray said. "We didn't run too well when we ran Concord up here, but at NLC they were a little more familiar, and hopefully at sectional, they will feel right at home."

The top five teams advance to the regional, along with the top 15 individuals.

Grose is hoping his Tigers rebound from a disappointing fifth-place finish at the NLC championship after going 4-2 in the regular season in conference play.

"I just hope we use a strong finish by our top kids to help us," Grose said. "Our goal as a team is to have a good meet regardless of what happens and just keep our times consistent with what we have done. And use this as something to look forward to throughout the summer and fall next year so we can compete."

Obviously, with the sectional, the competition will be even greater than that of the NLC championship.

The Warsaw girls finished last in the NLC, but Sibray has hopes of improvement from the team and maybe advancement from freshman Summer Boyd, who was ninth at the NLCs.

"We have hopes for Summer," Sibray said. "The competition will be about the same as the NLCs, and if she can run as well as she did then, hopefully she has a shot of going on. The other girls will be here to do what they can and support Summer, and do what they can as individuals and work on their own personal times. We will just have to wait and see how it goes. From one week to the next it changes."

For Wawasee, advancing the girls team out of sectional is definitely a good possibiliity after a third-place NLC finish, but the boys might be a little tougher after finishing last at the NLCs.

"We are looking forward to it, and hopefully we can get both shots out to the regional," Wawasee coach Dave Stookey said. "That would be a real accomplishment on our part."

The Wawasee girls will be looking to have a healthy run after dealing with injuries and sickness throughout the season, leaving them without some key runners at times.

"We have our work cut out for us," Stookey said. "It will be a dog race. especially with this sectional, trying to get to the regional because their will be eight really good schools there, and only five get out."

Despite having only five runners, Stookey has high hopes for the boys, as well.

"I still think these guys have a shot of getting out of the sectional," Stookey said. "There are about three teams that you can count on getting out, and the other two spots will be up for grabs. With five guys, you have to all five of them running on top of their race.

"It just seems to be one of those years that nothing has gone right when you needed them to go right," he said. "These guys haven't given up. There are still fight and desire for them to get out of the sectional. That will be our goal."

Manchester Sectional

At North Manchester, the host Squires are as happy to be running on their home course as the rest of the field.

"Truthfully, we stay away from our course for training during the season," Manchester coach Kevin Walter said. "We are happy by this time of the year that are times are dropping, and we now part of it is how good the course is. And we like the fact that we are not traveling miles and miles to run. That is an advantage."

Walter expects a good chance for his girls' team to advance, but with the boys, he is not as optimistic.

"Really our girls have an outside chance of advancing, especially Christy Markstahler and Shay Knecht," Walter said. "Our girls ran the best they have all year last week at the TRC. They had all personal records. If they can step it up a little, we will all be going onto the regional."

"We hope we can get some individuals through, Jeremy Stacy and Royce Walter, possibly," he said.