Nerdsletter 9/9/26

jayslagle
5 hours ago
10 min read

Contributor: The Nerd

Sometimes the tank runs out

At its core, cross country is a science experiment. The coach and athlete share the role of Victor Frankenstein, two mad scientists focused on creating the Creature. Over one season or an entire high school career, they tinker with the Creature to maximize the performance of the heart, lungs, and legs. They even dive into the soft sciences, tinkering with the Creature’s brain to create that perfect combination of motivation, resilience, strategy, and pain tolerance.

“Be comfortable being uncomfortable.” “Leave nothing in the tank.” Those t-shirt slogans get tossed around, often as a joke. However, when the margin of error is so small, giving less than your best may be the difference between success and failure.

Cross country races, especially on the hot and humid days we had last week, are rarely easy; there will be no comfort. At the starting line, the athlete turns her effort dial to 100%. If all goes well, she will finish in good form with nothing left in the tank.

Sometimes the tank runs out sooner than expected.

Distance running mimics life. We fall. We get knocked down. The secret to success isn’t to avoid failure. The secret is to get back up. Take some time to catch your breath. Crawl if necessary. But eventually you’ve got to get back on your feet. You persist. You finish the race.

Emma Rinne, a freshman at Lincoln East, ran her first high school race on Saturday morning. Fifty percent humidity. Eighty-five degrees. A blazing sun. A varsity spot at stake.

Emma’s tank ran out. She fell forty meters from the finish line. Tried to stand but couldn’t. A coach from another school leaned over the barrier and shouted encouragement. She crawled for ten meters. Found her strength. Stood up without help. Staggered the final thirty meters. Finished the race.

Emma didn’t get a medal. She definitely won the day.

I posted this story on social media around noon on Saturday. It struck a chord among former runners and cross country parents. A few postscripts since then:

1) Emma was the third runner for the Spartans when she fell. Despite the fall, she finished fifth for the team, sealing her spot on varsity for another week.

2) Her coach reported that Emma needed no medical care after the race besides hydration and some careful observation by trainers to make sure she was fine.

3) In addition to this being Emma's first high school cross country race, it was her first distance race in quite some time. She participated in Girls on the Run in elementary school but did not run in junior high.

4) Before we make a sensitive 'failure' post like this, we typically ask for permission. I photographed Emma, texted her coach, saw her coach a few minutes later and asked him to ask Emma if we could post the story, and he cleared it with her before they were back in Lincoln. In that same vein, we deleted a dozen or so vomit photos from other meets last week.

5) As usual, we had two replies to our Facebook post suggesting that Emma should have been pulled from the race once she fell, and where were the adults who should have made that decision? First, I've seen no guidance from the NFHS (National Federation of State High School Associations), the rulemaking body for high school sports in most states, that suggests pulling every fallen runner from a race. Second, there were adults watching closely. While the pictures are cropped and don't reflect it, meet official Scott Beckler was approximately ten feet to the right of Emma for her final thirty meters. An adult woman, presumably Emma's mother, began walking inside the fence line behind Emma after she fell. Behind my perch at the finish line, I could hear the adult trainers from Papio South having a discussion about how they would assist her. No one touched Emma until she crossed the finish line, but she was in the trainers' arms one step later.

6) In addition to the excellent care she received from the Papio South trainers, later in the weekend Emma connected with the Lincoln East trainers and saw a medical professional. Everything checked out fine. After a few days of restricted activity early this week just to be cautious, she'll likely be racing on Friday at the Platte River Rumble. And yes, she'll be on the varsity squad.

Rankings

The team and individual rankings issued this week are beginning to reflect race results, although we've still got a few ranked athletes who have yet to compete in a 5K race. You can find the coaches' team rankings and our individual rankings at https://www.preprunningnerd.com/rankings. The processes for both are entirely subjective and nuanced. For example, a few teams raced on Thursday at Seward and Saturday at Minden, and the finishing order of athletes was not always consistent. We do our best to digest the results as well as considering the differences between courses. For example, we think that the Augie Twilight course is 30-45 seconds faster than the normal course in Nebraska, while on a hot day the East Butler home course is about two minutes slower than the typical course. I'm just a photographer, and the East Butler meet last year was almost the end of me.

In general, if an athlete didn't compete last week and we don't know why, they dropped at least a few spots and may no longer be ranked. If a coach reached out to tell us why the athlete didn't compete (minor injury, schedule conflict), we'll take that into consideration.

Results

This past week reflected our first full week of meets, although the heat forced the cancellation of the Plattsmouth and North Platte St. Pat's meets as well as the high school portion of the Lexington meet. One of the quirks of cross country is that a number of the meets are run on golf courses, and those meets are often scheduled in the afternoons so that golfers can use the courses in the morning. When a meet needs to be moved to the morning due to high temps, golf courses are not always willing to cancel morning tee times - after all, they're a business that needs revenue. Wisner-Pilger was one of the few meets set on a golf course that was able to move to a morning meet, but only because they started planning well in advance to move the meet to an entirely new course at a city park.

We appear to have found results for all of last week's meets, and those results are linked at https://www.preprunningnerd.com/xcresults. A few notable results from last week:

The Minden meet on Saturday added a few teams after the NPSP meet cancellation on Thursday, and the boys' field included two ranked runners each from Doniphan-Trumbull, Northwest and Gothenburg. Class D defending champ Kaser Johnson of DT flew to a 15:29, followed by Jaxon Cushing (16:04) and Ethan Smith of Northwest (16:34), and Tyler Hetz (16:45) and Bryson Neels (17:09) of Gothenburg. On the girls' side, Class C defending champ Scout Bell won in 19:22 in her season debut. There were just under ten ranked runners in the girls' field, and we were impressed by freshmen Rinlee Blomstedt (2nd, 19:50) of McCook and Cassidy Reiman (4th, 20:01) of Gothenburg. Blomstedt won the prior week at North Platte in her first high school race.
At the Omaha Burke meet on Saturday, Class A preseason #7 Madison Scott, a freshman at Millard West, outsprinted B#2 Lucy Zabloudil of Gretna to win the title by one second in 19:28. Class A#2 Millard West took the team title over B#1 Gretna, and Millard West's JV girls' team swept the top six spots en route to a perfect team score of 15. On the boys' side, Caleb Thome, a senior at Millard North, won the first high school XC race of his career to earn the #6 ranking in Class A this week.
Plattsmouth had to cancel their home meet on Tuesday but nabbed an entry into the DC West meet on Thursday. Mallory Robbins of Plattsmouth was fifth in the Class C preseason rankings, and she cruised to a 20:12 win, finishing ahead of C#14 Madelyn Barnard of Bishop Neumann. Jack Steinbach of DC West won the boys' title in 17:10 and moved from #9 in the preseason rankings to #6 this week.
In conditions described as absolutely-brutal-throw-out-the-times conditions at Superior on Tuesday, Lily Daly of Hastings St. Cecilia earned the second win of her career by edging freshman Kelsey Betka of McCool Junction. Two-time defending State champ McCool Junction held out their top two girls for minor injuries, which may explain why the coaches gave Crofton the top spot in the week's team rankings at https://www.preprunningnerd.com/rankings.
Top-ranked Aiden Gehring and Emily Hegge of Papio South had their 5K season debuts at the Titan Classic, posting convincing wins in 15:44 and 18:24, respectively. Sam Schlautman of Pius ran to the #1 ranking in Class B with his 16:12 runner-up finish.
The Charlie Thorell meet at Seward provides an unusual mix of competition from all four classes, and Thursday's meet was full of talent. Jackson Einspahr of Seward was the biggest revelation, winning the boys' title in 15:56. A senior, it was Jackson's first cross country race in high school due to football (9th, 10th) and injury (11th). It was also his first race of any sort since he ran a 4:23 1600 at Districts in May 2025. Jackson is the son of NAIA track royalty Kregg Einspahr and Suzanne Weeder-Einspahr, who both earned multiple national titles while competing at Concordia and Doane, respectively. Seward won the team title over a strong Lincoln North Star team, and this week's Class B top-15 rankings include Einspahr, Cale Griesen and Austin Koch. J'Shawn Afuh of Lincoln North Star ran 16:10 to finish second in his season debut, and he's A#3 this week. Maya Freyer of Omaha Marian won her second meet of the season, this time in 18:25, and Marian placed three girls in the top four to win the score-four title, while Seward's Haylen Holliday led the Bluejays to a second-place finish.
The Augie Twilight start time kept getting pushed back due to the heat, and because of the heat this year's times weren't quite as impressive as previous years. The race course is run on pancake-flat soccer fields with over thirty 90-degree turns, and the field is huge and competitive. Avery Arens of Crofton was the top Nebraskan girl in 7th place (17:38), followed by Aubrey Anderson (19th, 19:03) of Norfolk and Cece Kramper (21st, 19:04) of Duchesne. Liam Gonzalez of Norfolk led the boys with his 15:13 in 6th place, followed by Leverett Stricklett (12th, 15:55) and Martin Aringu (21st, 16:08) of Omaha Central. Here's a short list of the top Nebraska high school and collegiate athletes at Augie:

Girls field, 418 finishers
7th, Avery Arens, Crofton, 17:38
19th, Aubrey Anderson, Norfolk, 19:03
21st, Cece Kramper, Duchesne, 19:04
33rd, Delani Runnels, Niobrara/Verdigre, 19:29
35th, Layla Thomas, North Platte, 19:30
40th, Jenna Dahl, Fremont, 19:41
67th, Clare Lickteig, Duchesne, 20:01
73rd, Yuridia Avalos Samaniego, Fremont, 20:06
84th, Eden Majerus, North Platte, 20:17
87th, Caitlin Steliga, Westside, 20:20
92nd, Isabelle Dominguez, Westside, 20:27

Girls team scores, 45 teams
10th, Omaha Duchesne, 453
15th, North Platte, 477
22nd, Norfolk, 590

Boys field, 503 finishers
6th, Liam Gonzalez, Norfolk, 15:13
12th, Leverett Stricklett, Prep, 15:55
21st, Martin Aringu, Omaha Central, 16:08
25th, Gavin Leeper, Westside, 16:09
29th, Jack Knapp, North Platte, 16:14
30th, Peter Lickteig, Prep, 16:14
31st, Kamden Cupples, Prep, 16:17
46th, Aaron Robles, Prep, 16:30
51st, Jasper Semrad, Fremont, 16:33
58th, Peter Youell, Prep, 16:39
61st, Devin Neumann, Westside, 16:43
66th, Bryan Titus, North Platte, 16:45
73rd, Kaine Jones, Grand Island, 16:49

Boys team scores, 54 teams
5th, Prep, 154
9th, North Platte, 411
10th, Fremont, 446
15th, Omaha Central, 565
17th, Westside, 585
The collegiate results at Augie:

Collegiate women, 349 finishers
6th, Alexus Sindelar, USD, 17:32 (Pierce HS)
7th, Grace Steinmetz, Bellevue, 17:34
10th, Peyton Svehla, USD, 17:42 (Lincoln East)
14th, Jordyn Arens, Augustana, 18:02 (Crofton)
17th, Kori McClain, USD, 18:07 (North Platte)
34th, Hailey Hengtgen, Doane, 18:35 (Palmyra)
41st, Hope Beck, Concordia, 18:42
55th, Kristen Billings, Doane, 19:01 (Auburn)
57th, Maggie Boley, Bellevue, 19:05
71st, Alison Bradford, Doane, 19:17 (Gering)
74th, Ellie Thomas, USD, 19:18 (Norris)
75th, Addison Bertrand, Wayne State, 19:20
79th, Ashley Robertson, Concordia, 19:27 (Wallace)

Collegiate men, 479 finishers
1st, Isaac Ochoa, USD, 14:14 (Norfolk)
9th, Piercze Marshall, USD, 15:03 (MWest)
13th, Luke Johnson, SDSU, 15:08 (ElkSouth)
29th, Porter Bickley, Doane, 15:32 (MWest)
32nd, Jayden Wall, Doane, 15:34 (Westside)
34th, Alvin Keter, Doane, 15:35
39th, Lucas Frazier, Wayne State, 15:37 (Beatrice)
45th, Trey Robertson, Concordia, 15:42 (Wallace)
48th, Axton Stone, Doane, 15:44 (Gering)
54th, Aidan Limback, Concordia, 15:47
56th, Kyle Finney, Wesleyan, 15:49 (Mullen)
62nd, Vaughn Hendrickson, Concordia, 15:54
65th, Keith Siek, Concordia, 15:56
68th, David Felipe Mejia, Bellevue, 15:57
71st, Jack Brown, Bellevue, 15:59

This and that

Last week's Nerdsletter included a summer's worth of Nebraska running updates, but that means I don't have much to share this week. If you missed the September 2 Nerdsletter, it has some interesting updates on Nebraskan high school athletes who have had success at the next level. If you have news that you think might be interesting to the running community, shoot me an email at jayslagle@hotmail.com or DM me on X or Facebook. My one big thing:

We believe Emily Hegge of Papio South and Avery Arens of Crofton will be in the Fremont Twilight varsity race on Friday night. They are the defending State champs in Class A and D, respectively. That race is currently scheduled to begin at 9:00 p.m. Iron sharpens iron.

Photos

We lost a few Nerd assignments due to meet time changes, but we still had a great showing last week. Their albums are posted on our Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/PrepRunningNerd/photos_albums. We often hear feedback that we're not labeling the albums but, yes, they are all labeled; we can't control how Facebook delivers them to you.

All of our Nerds have jobs and families so they edit photos when they have time, which is why photos are usually posted two to seven days after a meet. If you're looking for photos from a specific meet, you can go to https://www.preprunningnerd.com/2022 to see if your meet is listed. We don't update the website as often as the Facebook page, but the website is a helpful resource if you're trying to find a meet that was held over a week ago. Here are examples of albums posted in the last week, with Royal Nerd and Broken Nerd getting extra credit for blindly shooting and editing photos at the dimly-lit Augustana Twilight meet.

Lexington JH meet and Lex-only HS time trial, 9/3 (Faithful Nerd)

Platte River Rumble collegiate, 9/4 (Nerd Senior)

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Originally written and published in September 2026 at www.preprunningnerd.com.

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 Hassenstab," a story about a high school triple jumper who became a quadriplegic after a swimming accident.