9/10/25 Nerdsletter

jayslagle
Sep 9
16 min read

Contributor: The Nerd

In April 2021, an orthopedic doctor performed arthroscopic surgery to remove loose cartilage from my knee. During the first post-op appointment, he told me my long and mediocre running career was over. Two months later I visited him for my final post-op, told him I was walking about 40 miles per week, and asked if running was still out of the question. He gave his approval and I slowly built up my mileage over the next three years, allowing me to run my 10th marathon in June 2024. Almost as soon as I finished the marathon, I started looking at the Boston qualifying times for sixty-year-old men. Could I keep building on my fitness and achieve something that seemed impossible even in my forties?

Well, the answer seems to be 'no.' Despite consistent weightlifting beginning last December and a more ambitious training plan than in 2024, this past June I ran eight minutes slower than the prior year when my goal had just been to finish. Despite the setback, I tried to remain hopeful that my October marathon would yield better results. However, I struggled to stay motivated during the dog days of July and August, and my plans for a fall marathon have fallen apart. In retrospect, I have realized that I LOVE the act of running but... setting a goal of qualifying for Boston made it feel less fun and more of an obligation.

I often see the same pattern as I watch distance runners move through their high school years. There are inevitably dozens of freshmen each year who find surprising success, whether it's consistently running at the front of races or simply putting up times that few other freshmen at their school have achieved. They simply show up for practice, run whatever the coach tells them to run, and then go about their days trying to conquer all the academic and social challenges that high school brings. With few pre-season expectations and no real race strategy other than chasing someone in front of them, their seemingly effortless performance leads them - and most people around them - to assume that their next three years will only get better.

Of course, that doesn't always happen. What does happen, however, is that the runner starts setting more ambitious goals: making varsity, new competitors to beat, more medals to win, perhaps achieve a top-15 ranking from the Nerds. When those achievements don't happen or don't occur as quickly as planned, the athletes get frustrated. Maybe they're fighting an injury or other runners are progressing faster. Puberty-related maturation could be depleting their energy. Maybe school or dating isn't going well, and the very best thing from their freshman year - running - isn't a highlight as a sophomore.

A 2022 article in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology addresses this phenomenon - not running success per se, but what makes us happy. The authors reviewed 102 studies prepared over 30 years to examine what factors drive an individual's well-being, and they found that a focus on intrinsic goals (growth, relationships, service, health) promoted well-being while extrinsic goals (wealth, fame, fortune) had a negative effect on well-being.

I'm no social scientist, but I interpret this to mean that 'process goals' are more effective at promoting happiness than 'performance goals.' For example, process goals would include going to practice every day and executing the workout (including running easy on the easy runs), eating well, getting 8-10 hours of sleep, taking advantage of team-building activities, mentoring teammates and devoting time to mental preparation (journaling, mantras, visualization). Performance goals are what I described above: Instagram clout, running faster, earning medals, beating a specific competitor. In nearly all cases, you can control intrinsic/process goals, but other people often control whether you'll achieve extrinsic/performance goals.

I won a handful of medals when I was a cross country runner. My sons won even more. If you ask any of us for our favorite high school running memories, they won't be about specific results. Mine will be about long bus rides and training on gravel roads around Falls City. Jack and Henry could tell you stories about summer long runs and the banana pancake breakfasts that Father Tillman prepared for the varsity team. Distance running will bring you highs and lows, but it can also deliver happiness if you focus on the right things. You have a long running career ahead - maybe decades long - so stop worrying about what's going to happen next week or next month. Enjoy today.

Small steps

Jase Bornemeier of Elmwood-Murdock found quite a bit of success in distance running in the 2024 calendar year. As a 7th grader he posted PRs of 2:31 and 5:30 on the track, and then followed that up with five top-10 finishes in cross country in the fall. He finished the XC season with a 32nd-place result in the Open Race at the Nebraska JH State meet, and all signs pointed to a promising 2025 track season.

Unfortunately, on December 16, 2024 Jase was seriously injured in a head-on collision when his sister lost control of her car on black ice on the way to school. As the passenger, Jace sustained two broken femurs and a broken collarbone. His right femur was broken in three places and he underwent three surgeries in four days. After the final surgery, Jase spent nine days in inpatient rehab and was released from the hospital on January 3rd. In addition to a new wheelchair and walker, Jase also came home with two metal rods in his legs, an internal plate in his collarbone, and several nails and screws to keep all of his broken bones in place. Jase began physical therapy at home immediately. He returned to school on January 6th, utilizing a wheelchair and walker until the end of February when he began outpatient physical therapy, which continued until the end of May. When the family went on a vacation in March, Jase still used a wheelchair from time to time because he tired very easily.

To keep Jase motivated and optimistic, his mom printed off and posted articles on the walls of his bedroom about collegiate and professional athletes, such as Josef Marschuetz, EJ Henderson and Donna Arrington, who had successfully returned to sports after breaking their femurs.

In late March the junior high track season began. Jase asked his parents if he could sign up; they suggested he join as a student manager and use his down time to walk laps around the track. However, they weren't terribly surprised when the coach called a few weeks later with a question: "Are you sure Jase can't run?"

On April 15, Jase ran his first race since the accident. The goal was to finish and he accomplished that, running a 7:03 1600. The next week he ran 7:09. The week after that, a mind-blowing 5:45. Two weeks later, just nine weeks after he stopped using a wheelchair at school, he finished his season with a 5:35, just five seconds off his PR.

Two weeks ago I had the good fortune to photograph Jase's first high school race during a meet at Weeping Water. Jase finished 11th with a time of 19:54. He earned a medal that day and, just like the rods, plate and screws in his body, he'll be able to keep it the rest of his life. He's just a freshman. He's already a warrior.

Jase, the broken kid from the car accident, is running again. Put that in an article and post it on a wall.

Augie madness

Many of you probably know by now that three Nebraska girls ran sub-18:00 5ks at the Augustana Twilight meet on Friday. Most of our followers haven't actually been to the meet so I wanted to put those results into context.

The meet is held at a Sioux Falls park filled with soccer fields. Therefore, it's extremely flat. In order to get a 5k out of such a small area, the course (map linked here) is effectively an H-shape that the 5k athletes run four times. By my math, the high school kids execute forty-one 90-degree turns while the collegiate men's 4-mile race has over fifty such turns. While the field is not as competitive as Nike Regionals, it's not a cake walk: each high school varsity race has 40+ teams from the Dakotas, Minnesota, Iowa and Nebraska. The sun sets during the girls' high school race (7:30 start time) and spotlights are only the light source by the time the women's collegiate race starts at 8:30. Even on hot evenings, the temps are pleasant by sunset. Loud music plays throughout the race and the course setup allows thousands of fans to see athletes twice each lap. To summarize, the meet is flat, cool, loud, electric and competitive, a perfect recipe for fast times.

There have been questions about whether the Twilight course is a full 5k. Several boys who finished in the top 50 at Augustana registered distances of 3.08-3.11 miles on their watches. By comparison, my Strava feed reflects that three of the top boys in the Burke race at Walnut Grove on Saturday ran distances of 3.08-3.11 miles while three varsity boys at the Papio South meet had Strava posts of 3.12-3.14 miles. Looking back to last October, five athletes I follow on Strava recorded distances of 3.12-3.14 miles at the State meet. Of course, this all depends on when an athlete stop his or her watch, but it seems like the Twilight course is in the same distance range as other local meets. Now to the results...

The biggest headline out of the meet was that two Nebraska girls placed 5th and 7th. Freshman Avery Arens of Crofton, in the first meet of her high school career, ran a 17:06, while junior Cece Kramper of Duchesne ran her second sub-18:00 of the season with her 17:10. Kori McClain of North Platte, whom we had 11th in the preseason rankings, dropped a 17:58 the week after her 18:43 at the Sutherland meet. As we all know, every XC course is different and there are no State records that span across courses. However, in the 12 full XC season since 2013 when the 5k distance was introduced for Nebraska girls, only one girl (Elli Dahl, Fremont) has run a sub-18:00 in-season; she ran 17:57 at the 2021 State meet. The other four girls who have run sub-18:00 (Kendall Zavala, Jaci Sievers, Berlyn Schutz and Gabby McGinn) did so at Nike Regionals following the season. Consequently, Kramper's 17:49 at Gretna two weeks ago now ranks as the fastest in-State time while Arens now has the fastest in-season time of 17:06.

Of course, early-season times on flat courses mean little. However, it does mean that Kramper keeps her top ranking in Class B, Arens jumps from 4th to 1st in Class D with a time that is 2:45 faster than the fastest non-Augie time in Class D, and McClain moved from 11th to 3rd in Class A on the basis of her two strong results this season. In terms of teams, preseason B#7 Duchesne finished 10th out of 44 teams, unranked Norfolk was 17th and D#10 Crofton was 21st against a field with bigger schools.

For the boys, the biggest surprise may have been that Norfolk had the two fastest Nebraska finishers. Liam Gonzalez (unranked in preseason) ran his 2nd strong race of the season while David Protzman (#7) bounced back from a bad opening meet; they both ran 15:25. Jared Schroeder of Waverly, ranked 5th in the preseason, ran 15:29 while Fremont's Aden Soto (ranked 8th) was close behind in 15:32. Despite having their first finisher at 33rd place, A#2 Creighton Prep finished 4th out of 54 teams while A#3 Fremont finished 8th.

The top finishers from Nebraska:

12 Liam Gonzalez, Norfolk, 15:23

13 David Protzman, Norfolk, 15:23

15 Jared Schroeder, Waverly, 15:29

17 Aden Soto, Fremont, 15:32

33 Isaiah Coleman, Prep, 15:47

42 Martin Aringu, Central, 15:56

45 Aaron Robles, Prep, 15:57

46 Jorge Carpio, Grand Island, 15:59

48 Nathaniel Vieyra, North Platte, 16:01

49 Hylan Caouette, Prep, 16:01

5 Avery Arens, Crofton, 17:06

7 Cece Kramper, Duchesne, 17:10

11 Kori McClain, North Platte, 17:58

31 Abbi Durow, Millard South, 18:43

40 Delani Runnels, Niobrara Verdigre, 18:51

42 Emma Steffensen, Waverly, 18:53

45 Katie Johnsen, Grand Island, 18:58

65 Aubrey Anderson, Norfolk, 19:14

70 Annie Carda, Duchesne, 19:23

73 Maya Wagner, Fremont, 19:27

Freshmen doing big things

Emily Hegge, a freshman at Papio South ranked #1 in our preseason rankings, opened her high school career with a 18:50 at her home meet.
McCool Junction's Carter Mierau won the Superior meet in 18:14, thirty-one seconds ahead of 2nd place.
Madelyn Barnard of Bishop Neumann won the DC West meet at the not-easy Boys Town course in 21:07 while fellow freshman Owen Erickson of Boys Town won the boys title in 18:27.
Reagan Moody of Ainsworth won her home meet in 21:42.
Maci Lyons of Niobrara County won the Gering meet in 20:15, just edging preseason #5 Rarity Cournoyer of Gordon-Rushville.
Addison Hauxwell of Chase County won the Cambridge meet in 20:03. The first four finishers in that meet were freshmen: Hauxwell, Carly Softley of Maywood-Hayes Center, Lydia McGovern of Cambridge and Aysha Neal of Alma.
Micah Houchin didn't win a meet, but the Axtell freshman finished 2nd at Cambridge in 17:35, just sixteen seconds behind Class D#6 Kael Garrett of Medicine Valley.
Maddox Helgoth of Kearney finished 5th at the 14-team Omaha Burke meet in 16:42.
We don't have complete results as of press time, but Tayla Hurner of Wayne finished 2nd at the Boone Central meet with a time of 20:21, sixteen seconds behind Class C#1 Avery Heinrich of Columbus Scotus. Tayla was one of the freshmen we highlighted in our Class C season preview.

Impressive teams

At the Papio South meet, Lincoln Southwest, ranked #2 in the Class A preseason polls, won the girls' title 30-44 over Class B preseason #1 Pius.
Class D Tri County tackled Class B competition for the second consecutive week. The TC boys finished 2nd in the 8-team Beatrice meet, just five points behind Class B#3 Elkhorn.
Class A#1 Lincoln North Star competed at the Charlie Thorell meet in Seward. While it's mostly a Class B and C meet, the results were no less impressive. LNS took the first three spots: Josiah Bitker (15:58), Tyler Smith (16:07) and J'Shawn Afuh (16:07). In addition, Titus Bitker (6th, 16:45) and Franky Turek (7th, 17:00) posted the type of marks you'll need to win the Class A title.
Omaha Marian won the girls side of the Thorell meet, a mini-upset over Class B#1 Elkhorn North. Marian won with depth, placing 5th, 6th, 9th, 16th, 17th and 18th. Their five top finishers were freshmen and sophomores.
The Doniphan-Trumbull boys beat Perkins County 17-18 at the North Platte St. Pat's meet. The Cardinals are ranked 10th in Class D while Perkins County is ranked 3rd.
The Holdrege boys dominated the Cozad meet, placing boys in 1st, 3rd, 4th, 6th, 7th and 8th. There is a reason they're ranked first in Class C.
The Gordon-Rushville girls finished 2nd at the Gering meet, two points behind Scottsbluff with four athletes scored. Had the three-scorer approach been used, as it is for Class D, Gordon-Rushville would have won the meet.
The Class A preseason #1 Millard West girls edged the Class B preseason #3 Gretna team 42-49 at the Burke meet that scored five athletes. Gretna girls finished 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 19th and 21st, while Millard West girls were 5th, 6th, 7th, 11th, 13th, 15th and 18th.

Impressive times

Tatum Nielson, who in Week 1 ran the 5th fastest time ever at the Walnut Creek course (18:38), dropped a 18:22 at the Walnut Grove course on Saturday during the Burke meet.
Tyler Hetz of Gothenburg and Ethan Smith of Northwest battled for over two miles at the Minden meet before Hetz pulled away to win in 15:49, followed by Smith in 15:56. Hetz posted a 16:10 two days earlier at the Overton meet.
David Krier of Pius ran 15:56 at the Walnut Creek course, over 45 seconds faster than the best time posted the previous week on the same course at the Class A Class of Metro meet.
Sam McQuistan of Holdrege won the Cozad meet by 39 seconds with his 16:28. That's a 44-second improvement over his time at Cozad in 2024.
Sophia Reynolds of Hastings ran 19:14 to win the Overton meet on Thursday.

You can find results for all of last week's meets (except for Boone Central, which had some timing issues) at https://www.preprunningnerd.com/xcresults.

Here and there

Answering questions that people have asked me in the last week or news that we have stumbled upon:

Berlyn Schutz did not compete at the Platte River Rumble on Friday night although most of her teammates did. Because Berlyn competed at NCAA T&F Nationals in June, her summer conditioning started late, so she won't return to racing until UNL competes at Missouri.
We ran into the K-State coaching staff at PRR. They reported that Westside alum Stella Miner is healthy and as fit as she's ever been, and she'll start her sophomore season in a few weeks. The highlight of Stella's freshman season at K-State was a 3rd-place finish at Big 10 Indoors in the 1,000 meters.
We're so sorry to share that Eli Goodell of Perkins County and the rest of his family will be relocating to Ohio at the conclusion of the cross country season. Eli has finished 2nd at Class D State XC the past two years and was 2nd in the 1600 and 3200 at the Class C State T&F meet this past spring. Eli's father is a minister and he has been called to his next role. Eli is rumored to be scouting next spring's competition on athletic.net. However, we are guessing that Eli's top priority is winning his first State title before he moves.
We're even more sorry to share that Carson Noecker appears to have retired from competitive racing. Competing for South Dakota State, he just missed qualifying for NCAA XC Nationals as a freshman before finishing 44th at D1 Nationals last fall. He medaled in the 5k at Summit League indoors and the 5k and 10k at Summit League outdoors last spring so he definitely goes out on a high note. Carson is a man of deep faith with a strong connection to his family farm, and his farming obligations this spring and summer limited his ability to give his best effort to running. We wish him nothing but the best in the next chapter of his life.
Fremont and Elkhorn North will be joining the Omaha Metro Conference next year (2026-2027 school year) and Elkhorn North is expected to move to Class A at the same time. Elkhorn North is the largest Class B school in the NSAA Cross Country classifications this year; at this time it's unclear which of the smallest Class A schools may move down to Class B. In the current XC classifications, North Platte and South Sioux City are the two smallest Class A schools.
Kate Campos, who set the All-Class 300 hurdles State record while competing for Lincoln Pius in 2023, has transferred from Wichita State to UNL. She should have two years of eligibility remaining.
We saw dozens of former Nebraska high school athletes at the Platte River Rumble collegiate meet on Friday, but Norfolk alum Isaac Ochoa made the biggest splash. The South Dakota sophomore finished the 6k course in 18:02, six seconds from the win and good for fifth place. He had the highest finish of any Nebraska athlete. Omaha South's Nick Abdalla, now at UNK, finished 8th in 18:07.
Stop me if you've heard this last name. At the DC West meet last Tuesday, Fremont 7th grader Jenna Dahl won the junior high race thirty-eight seconds ahead of a very solid field. The sixth-grade version of Jenna finished 8th last fall at the Nebraska State JH meet.
Speaking of names, for reasons entirely unrelated to running, a boy competing in the junior high race at the DC West meet sounded familiar. Blase Cupich of St. Patrick's of Elkhorn, presumably named after Omaha native Blase Cupich, the Archbishop of Chicago, finished in 4th place.

Team and individual rankings

The first in-season team rankings have been issued by the coaches. The biggest news is that there are new #1 teams for girls in Classes B, C and D, but there are plenty of new teams and big moves among all classes. You can find the coaches' and preseason rankings on our website at https://www.preprunningnerd.com/rankings.

The Nerds are responsible for issuing individual rankings and we've also published our Week 1 updates. You can read how we prepare the rankings in last week's Nerdsletter. Keep in mind that although we collect and review the results for every meet held in Nebraska, at the end of the day the rankings are still the result of a subjective process. If you think we've missed someone brilliant, drop us a polite DM or email to jayslagle@hotmail.com and we'll take a look at it.

Nerd HQ hiatus

While 30+ Nerds will be hard at work the next 10 days, Nerd HQ won't. Due to an ill-timed vacation, we won't be issuing rankings next week, we won't be publishing a Nerdsletter next week and, depending on Internet access, we may not be updating the results page until September 22nd.

Vacation during Nerd season? It's not our best planning. If it makes you feel better, we're skipping next week's paycheck. (For newbies, that's a joke. No Nerds get paid.)

Team ranking experiment

A repeat from last week but Joe Philippi, the Axtell XC coach, has crafted a mathematical approach to determine team rankings and, possibly, the introduction of wildcard spots for the State meet. This isn't an approved change to how teams qualify for State, but Joe is interested to see if there is a better way to rank and select teams. His database gives more weight to winning meets that have more teams and better teams. You can go to https://husker-xc-rankings.lovable.app/ and play around with the calculator. With so few results in the database, the rankings aren't going to be reliable quite yet, but we're interested to see how predictive they are of the teams that do qualify for State this year.

Season previews

New to cross country or just want to get up to speed on this season's best runners and teams? We've got that covered. We prepared eight season previews covering all four classes. They're posted on our Blog tab at https://www.preprunningnerd.com/blog. You might want to grab a drink before you dive in; our Word document was 40 pages long before we split the information into the eight articles.

Photos

We updated our website at https://www.preprunningnerd.com/2022 to list all of the Facebook albums that were uploaded as of Tuesday morning. Since our 9/1/25 Nerdsletter, we've added albums for Ainsworth, Cambridge, Class of Metro, JCC, Lexington, Niobrara, Papio South, Plattsmouth, Platte River Rumble collegiate, Schuyler, Seward and the LPS JH race this Monday. We still owe you a few albums: Hartington (8/28), Wisner-Pilger (9/4), North Platte St. Pats (9/4/25), Boone Central (9/5), a few photos from Augustana Twilight (9/5), Omaha Burke (9/6) and Beatrice (9/6). All of our Nerds have jobs and family and travel so it can be difficult to find time to edit thousands of photos. Please be patient.

We continue to receive messages that we don't label our photo albums. We do but Facebook often strips the description. If you go to https://www.facebook.com/PrepRunningNerd/photos_albums you can see all of our albums or you can look at the website listing, which isn't updated as often as Facebook.

Here are a few of our favorite photos from the past week:

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First published at www.preprunningnerd.com by Jay Slagle on September 9, 2025. If you find an error, shoot us an e-mail at jayslagle@hotmail.com and we'll get it fixed.

Like this coverage of the Nebraska T&F and cross country scene? There's more of this at www.preprunningnerd.com. Check out the Blog tab for our frequent stories and the Results tab for every Nebraska high school meet we can find. If you want to see meet photos or just need to kill a few hours on social media, follow us on Twitter and Instagram @PrepRunningNerd or on Facebook at www.facebook.com/preprunningnerd.

Finally, if you think runners, jumpers and throwers are the best things on earth, you'll enjoy our two most popular articles. In 2018 we published "The Runner with the Broken Heart" about a high school boy who finished last in nearly every race he ran. In 2022 we published, "The Fall and Rise of Emmett " a story about a high school triple jumper who became a quadrapalegic after a swimming accident.