Here are some racing opportunities this winter.  For those not in a winter sport I recommend putting together a racing schedule to have some fun and get some competitions in this winter.


Winter Track Meets and Road Races

UWM Open Meets

Chicago Gately Meet

Winter Road Races

Hale Finishes as 13th best team in the State

The beautiful world of cross country, the best sport in the world.  Lining up every week with a new opportunity to compete.  Getting the opportunity to finish your season with the team at the State Meet is always special and the team took full advantage of the opportunity this past Saturday.  Racing aggressive and with no limits, the team ran to a strong 13th place finish in the stacked Division 1 field!  

​Out of the gates strong, the team found itself in 9th place at the mile mark.  We knew the challenges ahead on the course, but putting ourselves in the mix allowed us to compete and not be too late to try and move up, knowing the race would be fast given the quality field and strength in returning teams.  Kai Bruner got out strong once again, with his teammate Elijah Sayeg right behind putting himself in position to have his career best high school race at the best time.  Ethan Plier put himself in perfect position early as our third scorer, with John Gruichich just off his pace.  Koda Bruner and Joseph Ventura found each other together at the mile, while freshman Caleb Jensen had a fantastic debut first mile of his state course debut.

​Places are tight at state, with 2 seconds deciding 10 places in many spots.  Finishing as our low scorer in his final cross country race, Elijah secured 19 points with a personal best time to boot.  After the quick start, Kai battled well to keep his team score low and finish as the 2nd scorer.  Many a men have gone out too aggressive the first 800 and fallen very far out of the race, but Kai showed his toughness to keep himself as a solid scorer.  Ethan ran a strong and consistent race, his best time as well finishing just behind Kai as our 3rd scorer.   This came as no surprise, as Ethan has been Mr. Consistent week in and week out, being one of our most reliable low scorers.  A week after his big sectionals performance, John had a bit more of a battle Saturday but fought to finish strong as our 4th scorer.  He helped the team put 4 men in front of KM after putting just 3 ahead of them a week prior.  Koda came in shortly after and helped the team secure a 13th place finish, ahead of 9th ranked Neenah and 14th ranked Menomonie!  The men battled for a top 10 spot and competed great, finishing just behind Shorewood and Verona in a close team battle.  Some crazy close scores from 3rd through 9th place as well this year, with just seconds separating team scores!

Also part of our 4 returners that got to race Saturday,  Joseph finished strong to a 17:45 debut on the Ridges course, while Caleb ran a personal best and beat guys that had beaten him earlier in the season!  Joseph beat 8 teams number 6 runner and Caleb beat 6 teams number 7 man as a freshman!  The experience of a state meet can really catapult a runner and with action and belief, anything is possible!  No limits.

The 13th place finish was the program's highest finish since 2012 where the team took 11th.  If looking at the season in terms of wins/losses, the team finished 118 - 23.  (118 wins and 23 losses).  The team won sectionals for the first time since 2004.  The team won two other invitationals and finished in the top 4 or higher in every other meet this year.  

For returning athletes, the tradition to leave the program in a better place now belongs with you!  This includes the 4 that competed this past week, and the other returners that have a great opportunity to step into scoring roles!  The growth of our current junior and senior crew from their freshmen years has been awesome to watch and is the fun part of this sport.  Opportunity is available for those that want it!  Have no limits, and go race fast in track this spring!

A big congrats to our 3 seniors who finished with phenomenal races at sectionals and state.  Congrats to Brody and Damien for finishing their high school cross country careers with huge races the Thursday before sectionals to pump up the guys to race great two days later.  The ride that is cross country and sports in general provides ups and downs, and the story for Nate's senior XC season didn't play out as anyone wanted, but with struggle there is growth and we are excited to see a healthy and fast Nate Hutter crush it on the track this spring!


2024 Results Workbook

Congrats to our teammate chosen athletes of the meet and B&G winners this fall!

Palmyra - Kai Bruner (Chosen by Elijah Sayeg).  B&G - Joseph Ventura
Betz - Henry Roemer.    B&G Nate Siepe-Pick, Payson Vahovick
Druckrey - Ethan Plier
Muskego - Iker Robles.  B&G Preston Plier, Caleb Jensen
Laser - Caleb Jensen.  B&G Brody Kaminski
Viking - Damien Sheridan.  B&G Elijah Sayeg, Ethan Muelrath
GMC - Evan May.  B&G Koda Bruner, U.P. Nate Hutter
JV State - B&G Antonio Lizalde Vega, U.P. Brody Kaminski
Sectionals - John Gruichich
​State - Congrats to the team for a great 13th place showing at the 2024 State Meet! 

Awards Night

An email reminder was sent on awards.  We are looking forward to seeing everyone.  More than anything, this is a night of being together and sharing stories from the season.  
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Sectional Champions!

​The focus for the week was to be the team we have been all year and take care of business by focusing on us.  Oh, and let's have a lot of fun.  The men did that in a commanding and loving way, leaving no doubt in route to a sectional title and a trip to state this coming week! 

With another great team focused effort, the guys established position up front early and found each other to run with.  Kai ran his race up front again and provided low points with a 3rd place finish, finishing with just one shoe at the end!  Racing as a pack from start to finish were John, Ethan and Elijah.  Seeing the mob of green in the top 10 meant we just needed a 5th man to seal the victory.  Koda and Joseph ran well early, with Koda moving up the second half and finishing a strong 17th place to put 5 ahead of the second place team's 4th runner.  The three man mob closed strong with John finishing 8th and Ethan finishing 10th to put three in the top 10!  Elijah held on for a strong 13th place finish.  Our close scoring margin continued with a 45 second spread between our 1 and 5 scorers.  Joseph provided a strong 6th man, finishing ahead of all other team's 5th man which will be important at state with close team finishes!   Caleb beat 5 of the 10 team's 7th man and was able to displace 3 team's scoring 5 while continuing to garner great championship racing experience as a freshman.

We turn our attention to state this weekend where the team looks to have it's best race of the season and our best state placing in many years.  Our focus will again be on running our race and being strong in the second half.  We look forward to a great opportunity, and another week together!

Fun notes - 

While the team had qualified for state in 2019, 2018 and 2012, all came via runner up finishes at sectionals.  The last sectional title to claim qualification was way back in 2004 (Coach Mach's junior year)!  This is the 28th year the entire team has qualified to the state meet!

A Fast Day at the Meet of Champions Last Chanced Meet!
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The Thursday last chance meet was huge for the team!  On a perfect and cool sunny afternoon, our crew went out for a shot at some fast races after a great season of racing.  While XC is not always time focused due to the vast differences in courses and conditions, we went to Rotary to run FAST.  And indeed they did!

With many top programs across the area and from far away, the race got out fast and stayed fast for a great opportunity to end the season with a personal best.  Damien took the guys out great and hung on for a huge personal best and first time under 19 to end his XC career with a 18:39 5k!  It was Preston and Brody rolling together from the gun and moving up strong all race.  Preston finished his jr. year with a big personal best and 18:20 5k, while Brody ended up breaking 19 for the first time in his career in his final race, racing to 18:28.  Both stayed on the pedal and found big races!  Scoring as 4th man, Ethan M. broke 19 for the first time and became our 2nd freshman this season under the mark!  Nearly breaking the 19 minute barrier and scoring in 5th was Henry, running a massive personal best as well.

Iker was looking for that sub 20 5k mark all fall, and was able to crush it with a 19:36 5k to finish his sophomore campaign.  Evan rounded out the 7 from the first race, running another solid race after having his 2 minute break through at GMC the week prior.

In the second race, Antonio earned a blood and guts by putting himself in the race and staying up there the whole way!  It helped him to a 2 and a half minute PR!  Yes you heard that right.  Nate S. , Wendy and Shaun packed up all in route to personal best times to end the season.  Payson also ran to a personal best to end his freshman year.

A cool team note too was beating Brookfield Central and Germantown, both who had beat us at conference the week before on the JV side.  

2024 Results Workbook

Congrats to our teammate chosen athletes of the meet and B&G winners so far!

Palmyra - Kai Bruner (Chosen by Elijah Sayeg).  B&G - Joseph Ventura
Betz - Henry Roemer.    B&G Nate Siepe-Pick, Payson Vahovick
Druckrey - Ethan Plier
Muskego - Iker Robles.  B&G Preston Plier, Caleb Jensen
Laser - Caleb Jensen.  B&G Brody Kaminski
Viking - Damien Sheridan.  B&G Elijah Sayeg, Ethan Muelrath
GMC - Evan May.  B&G Koda Bruner, U.P. Nate Hutter
JV State - B&G Antonio Lizalde Vega, U.P. Brody Kaminski
Sectionals -
​State -

State Meet Info

Those competing and alternates were sent detailed information for our weekend trip so please look that over.  The following information is for everyone!

Team Shirts - I will be calling early tomorrow morning to try and get team shirts in time for departure Friday.  Athletes competing and alternates will get a free shirt.  Any additional shirts will be available for purchase and will have very short turn around time.  I'll send information once I can confirm shirts.

Tickets and Race info - https://www.wiaawi.org/Sports/Fall/Boys-Cross-Country/Tournament

Please come up to watch!  We encourage guys not competing to drive up and support the team on Saturday!  If any parents want to volunteer to take some guys just let me know and I can let our guys know!

Practice this week
We would love if everyone can come to Monday for the meeting and are welcome to run as well!

Only varsity and alternates will have practice this week.  The team will have a send off in the auditorium this Thursday and leaves for state Friday morning.  Information will be provided by Mr. Lesar early this week on the send off that the guys will get information on.

Team Awards Reminder

The team awards night will be Wednesday, November 6th at 7:00 p.m.  The site is Free Methodist Church located at 2975 Sunny Slope Rd, New Berlin, 53151.  Hope everyone can make it for the fun and important night of celebration!  

Uniforms
We will ask athletes to turn in uniforms (Jerseys, shorts, jackets issued) to Coach Dewitt's room 108 right after school on Wednesday, November 6th.  You can just drop everything off and get checked off in about one minute, so should be out by 3:10 p.m. if you come right away to drop off.  We appreciate getting them all back at one time!

Team Photos from season-
Many of you have been adding photos to this album and I appreciate it!  Let's keep adding photos from the season to the album and I can take many of them to use at the awards at the end of the year!

https://photos.app.goo.gl/N41ayfsqUG47gwzc9

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