Warriors Impress Head Coach at Grinnell Meet

Cassidy Warson

On Saturday, September 9, the Waldorf cross country teams had their first take at running their full length races and coaches could see where everyone’s at.

There was a lot of impressing action that first year head coach Kayla Kregel saw in the first race on the day in the girl’s race in Grinnell.

“For the females, I wanted us to see us attack a 6k,” Kregel said. “I was hoping that Kuik could run with a front group. I didn’t know she was capable of doing that yet as a new coach and it’s only our second meet of the year, but she proved she could run with them and that’s really awesome to see. Widener and Bailey just mental toughness all the way through the race.”

Even though there were only four guys running in the men’s race, Kregel saw some positives and some things that she wants to work on.

“I wanted to see Nic and Murley go out and run together and do something special, but unfortunately either mental or physical, things have held us back from reaching our goals for the guys,” Kregel said. “My goal for the road ahead is to have everyone healthy for the Roy Griak, so we’ll see.”

Kregel went on to say what she would like to see different in the future for the races still to come in the season.
“They did good,” Kregel said. “I think as a race strategy, we need not to be afraid. We need to go out and be aggressive and even more aggressive than what we’ve been.”

Some of the positives that Kregel could comment on for the guy’s team included that Andrew Murley was only nine seconds away from his record in cross country.

Murley wasn’t the only other thing that she liked about what the boys did as Chasen Selsor and Jesse Vega were also doing things in the race.

“Chasen and Jesse, they went out and stayed together for the first mile or two and that was good to see,” Kregel said.

Looking at the big picture on the positive side, Kregel saw impressive times coming through the finish.
“I think the impressive part was the time that we dropped on this course compared to last year at this time,” Kregel said. “Especially since we haven’t been doing hill workouts.”

At the end of the day, the women’s team came in 10th. Next on the schedule is Roy Griak up in Minnesota in two weeks and coach Kregel has a game plan to get the team ready for that meet.

“This week we’re just focusing on who needs specific training,” Kregel said. “Next week, we’re switching from our aerobic threshold training to a more lactic threshold phase of training. So we’re gonna start to see a little more speed and some more hills into our training.”