November 11, 2004 at 8:24 a.m.
Wildcat seniors finish on top
Wildcat seniors finish on top
“It seemed like we actually ran thousands of races together over the years”, said Leaf.
Dery and Brelje agreed with Leaf’s assessment.
The Wildcat team came in 16th place overall at the meet. Leaf was the Wildcats’ top individual runner, finishing 24th in the team race with a time of 17:02.1. Marshall High School won the team AA title for the second consecutive year. They finished with just 34 points, the lowest total for a state champion since 1991. Marshall senior Yahya Iman was the top individual finisher, needing just 15:39.9 to complete the 5000-meter course.
“This is the first time in the history of the school that we made it to State as a team,” enthused Wildcat coach Ken Orwoll. “And we went into State coming off a peak performance at Sections.
“We would certainly like to do it over again,” continued Orwoll, assessing his team’s performance. “The kids were not real satisfied with how they finished. I think they were affected by the large crowd, the unfamiliar course and the number of quality teams competing. It was an eye-opening experience for all of us.’
As for his three seniors, what more could he say?
“They’re really great kids”, he said. “They always work hard to improve, they work with the younger runners and they don’t cause problems on or off the field. I’m glad they got the opportunity to run their last high school race together at State after running together for all those years.”
Orwoll also took a brief look forward at next year. “We’ll be in a tougher conference in 2005”, he mused. “And we’ll be a much younger team than we were this year. We’ll be led by current sophomore Zach Hunter and current junior Andrew Turner. Current freshmen Nathan Gieske and Matt Carpenter will also be returning from this year’s varsity. We certainly expect a challenging season.”
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