By Becky Walz,
Members of the 2024 Lady Warrior cross country team are (front row, l-r) Addy Conway, Lauren Ondrashek, Annie Hageman, Ava Franzen, Karissa Wenthold; (back row) Tessa Phillips, Katie Shimek, Cloey Zweibohmer, Maddy Jansen and Izzy Kuboushek. (Photo by Becky Walz)
The foundation is set for the preseason Class 1A No. 2 South Winn girls cross country team with six returning athletes from last year’s Class 1A runner-up team.
Guiding the two squads are Kevin Kearney and Scott Conway who are both in their 31st seasons with the cross country program.
Big things in 2023
The Warriors returned a core group of runners with experience in 2023.
Times continued to improve throughout the season, culminating with South Winn claim its fourth straight Upper Iowa Conference title and had six all-conference runners. At Central Springs a week later, the Warriors won the state-qualifying meet. The freshman duo of Annie Hageman and Ava Franzen finished with personal best times and punched individual tickets to the state meet l by finishing in the top 10.
Fueled by determination, the Warriors entered the state meet ranked third and knew it would be a close race to the deck. In the end it was a second place finish for South Winn, marking the fourth season in a row the Warriors were on the deck at state. Posting a time of 20:27.0, Maddy Jansen led the way for the Warriors with a 33rd place overall finish (12th in team standings), followed by Hageman in 38th (16th) in 20:30.4. Franzen brought home 40th (18th) in 20:33.6 with Josie Tieskoetter crossing the finish line in 75th (35th) in 21:12.6. Tieskoetter was the first Warrior female to be a contributing member of the four trophy-winning seasons. Izzy Kuboushek concluded the SW scorecard in 85th (42nd) while Karissa Wenthold (95th, 51st) and Lauren Ondrashek (58th, 103rd) also raced.
Graduating off the team from last season were Tieskoetter, Aubrey Willey and Josie Tollefsrud.
Ready for another go
The return of six of seven scoring runners at state will put a target on the Warriors’ backs throughout the season.
“Our other four girls had a great spring track season and look to factor into this season,” said the coaches. “One thing we are proud of over the past eight years or so is that we have had a very deep teams every year. Almost every year, we have No. 7, 8, 9 runners that could be scoring runners on almost every small school team in the state. This team has the potential to be that kind of team once again.”
Besides the six returnees, others looking to make it onto the course in varsity competition are senior Katie Shimek; juniors Addy Conway, Tessa Phillips and Cloey Zweibohmer.
An outlook
While the coaches are excited with the return of the experience, they are concerned about the girls staying healthy.
In addition, the veteran coaches said the team graduated key leaders from the squad each of the last several years, and the success of the team has been the result of new athletes stepping up to fill those leadership positions to help boost the performance of their teammates.
“We are off to a good start with that again this season, which is really important to our success later in the season,” the skippers said.
The potential to be competitive is there for the Lady Warriors as they will likely battle North Fayette Valley and MFL Mar Mac for the Upper Iowa Conference crown. Both squads return strong runners and will add in some talented freshman according to Coach Kearney and Coach Conway.
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