CrossTown: A High School Cross Country Series

Behind the scenes as two teams prepare for the fall

By Brian Metzler
As featured in the Web Only issue of Running Times Magazine

Aug. 14 — This week all across the U.S., spindly teenagers are gathering early in the morning and late in the afternoon for preseason cross country workouts. Although schools in a few states will be racing before the end of August, the first meets are still several weeks away for most schools.

Neuqua Valley coach Paul Vandersteen gives his runners workout details on a hot and humid June day in Naperville. On this day, the Wildcats are going to run 1.1-mile repeats through a shaded but mosquito-infested loop at Knoch Knolls Park.

But just because practices officially begins this week, it doesn’t mean training started this week. In fact, it better not. If you want to maximize your cross country racing in September, October and beyond, you better have started logging miles in June. Lots of miles.

That’s where we pick up with two schools from the same town in Illinois. Naperville is a large western suburb of Chicago, with 150,000 residents, countless parks and an historic downtown area that features quaint shops and trendy restaurants. It’s continually ranked as “one of the best places to live” by various magazines.

But for our interests, Naperville has also become a fervent hub for high school cross country. The girls and boys programs at the three public schools in the city limits — Naperville North, Naperville Central and Neuqua Valley — have all made their mark at the state meet over the last 20 years and have produced some of the finest prep runners in the state’s recent history.

Naperville North won its first state title in boys cross country last fall, beating perennial state and national power York by one point. But only four of its top seven runners — Tyler Jermann, Bob Guthrie, Charlie McKeown and Karsten Jurkiewicz — return from that team, so coach Dave Racey will need other runners to step up and fill the holes.

This series will focus on the boys teams at Naperville North and Nequa Valley, starting with their early summer workouts in the heat and humidity and following them through the season to the Illinois high school state meet on Nov. 7 in Peoria. We’ll report on each team’s progress — from summer training to preseason expectations to meet results and more — with photos, interviews and stories throughout the fall. We’ll also give a glimpse of what a few other Illinois schools are doing this fall and look back at a few memorable moments in the state.

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CrossTown: A High School Cross Country Series

Behind the scenes as two teams prepare for the fall

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