Eastland girls team off to sectionals

Among the wide range of girls cross country teams, many of whom have advanced to sectionals time and again, will be one relative newcomer.

After claiming fourth place at the Class 1A Oregon Regional last weekend, the Eastland Cougars are moving on, and will line up at the Class 1A Seneca Sectional on Saturday.

Eastland hasn’t gotten to a sectional as a team in recent years, but the Cougars have been represented. Last year, Delaney Wilhelms capped off her freshman year there.

Wilhelms’ run at last year’s sectional was good for 50th place with a time of 22:14, about a minute behind the last qualifier for the state meet.

“She had a goal of making it to state this year,” Cougars coach Kim Haverland said. “It’s been frustrating knowing that there isn’t a state [meet], because they work hard and they push themselves, but I think they would push themselves harder if there were a state.”

In 2018, Mara Schmieder and Emma Dampman each qualified out of the Rock Falls Regional.

Schmieder missed 2019 with an Achilles injury, but is back on the course this fall. Her last trip to the sectional in 2018 saw her miss out on a state spot by 25 seconds.

“Mara loves to run,” Haverland said. “This is her thing. This is her gig. She is one of the most positive runners. She builds up the team. Her energy feeds the team. She is always smiling, always laughing. She does huge things for our team.”

This season’s Eastland cross country roster is 18 runners deep more than double the eight on the roster in 2019, boosted by numbers from the Cougars’ volleyball team. Players including Paige Bardell, Karlie Krogman and Addison Burkholder were left with no fall sport when the IHSA reconfigured the schedule to put volleyball in the spring due to COVID-19.

“Even for the newbies, they have been listening to direction very well,” Haverland said. “At regionals, to solidify us getting through to sectionals, there were certain steps we had to make, there were certain people we had to pass, there were times they had to be around to give us a good shot, and they listened.”

It was Addison Burkholder who had the Cougars’ third-best time at the regional, taking 34th in 23:18. A pair of her freshmen teammates were right behind her, with Jenica Stoner and Kennedy Burkholder taking 35th and 36th.

Some of that mindset of picking off the runners in front of you gets honed and some of the larger invitationals a team would typically run throughout the season, events which got wiped off the schedule this fall.

“It took a little while for them to understand how moving on works, how the point system works, and why, if they’re taking points from the first five, Nos. 6 and 7 still matter,” Haverland said. “That was proven at our last regular season race when we tied [Durand-Pecatonica] for first and ended up losing. …. It took that for it to hit them.”