It's been another great season for Greene County harriers
So far the 2015 cross country season has all the makings of another banner year for Greene County teams and individual harriers.
And with most of the area's top runners returning from a season ago, it's not unexpected.
The Bloomfield boys and girls teams and the Eastern Greene girls advanced to this week's Bedford North Lawrence regional.
Both Cardinal teams finished fourth while the Lady Thunderbirds ran to a third-place finish in the team standings at the BNL Sectional.
Joining them at the BNL Regional will be the Shakamak Lady Lakers who finished fourth in the Terre Haute North Sectional.
The Cardinals, Lady Cardinals and Lady Lakers all qualified to compete at the same regional a year ago.
After the Bloomfield Invitational a month ago coach Caleb Dunkerly stressed the need for more consistency and harder work in practice.
"As a team, until we get more consistent we're not going to turn any heads. Until the girls start working harder in practice and believing in what we're trying to do we're going to get bounced out of the SWIAC and the sectional," he said.
Apparently the Lady Cardinals heeded Dunkerly's advice as they survived and advanced.
As did the Lady Thunderbirds.
Eastern Greene girls coach Adam Nonte said the thing our times were maybe a little off what they would have liked "But the reality is at this stage of the game it's all about surviving and advancing."
And Dunkerly said of the Cardinal boys, "I can't say enough about the boys. They've bought in since day one and believed they were could win the conference and they did. They believed they could advance out of here and they did that as well."
In addition 14 area runners advanced as qualifying individuals to compete at the regional level.
Eastern Greene's John Kirts, Justin Terry and Isiaha Padgett will compete in the BNL regional, as they did last season.
Shakamak's Clay Reynolds, Rylee Landry and Justin Lane and Linton-Stockton's Hanna Camden, Crislyn Woods, Janzen Franklin and Cameron Parola advanced from the Terre Haute North Sectional.
Franklin and Camden also ran in the BNL Regional last year as well. The Shakamak boys qualified as a team last season but lost several members to graduation.
Parola just missed qualifying for the regional by three seconds last year as a freshman but made it through this time.
A quartet of White River Valley harriers advanced from the Brown County Sectional to compete in the regional at the same site.
Buddy Davis, Hunter Cornelius and Brayton Cornelius are all repeat qualifiers. This year they'll be joined by Dakota Sparks.
Eight of these runners - five boys and three girls - advanced to the 2014 semistate from their respective regionals.
Davis, Bloomfield's Parker Ramsey and Alli Workman, Kirts, Franklin and Shakamak's Reynolds, Liz Bredeweg and Mariah Sweet were all semistate qualifiers.
Workman finished 8th at the semistate and 44th at the state meet.
Of this group, it's been Bredeweg who has shown the most significant improvement.
Bredeweg was already the Lady Lakers' top runner as a sophomore last year. This year she's lowered her times by at least 90 seconds.
She hasn't quite caught Workman but the gulf isn't nearly as wide.
Using the SWIAC meet as an example, Bredeweg finished 39 seconds behind Workman this year. In last year's conference meet Liz was nearly two minutes behind Alli (20:54 to Workman's 18:56).
Bredeweg cut 1:28 off her 2014 time on the same course.
For someone who was already good to improve that much is pretty remarkable.
Good luck to all our area cross country runners at this week's regionals. May you all duplicate or exceed last season's success.
Terry Schwinghammer is a sports writer for the Greene County Daily World. He can be reached by telephone at (812) 847-4487, ext. 27. He can also be reached via email at tschwing32@yahoo.com.
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