Seven Cyclone girls qualify for state meet

At the 3A cross country state qualifying meet Wednesday in Pella, all seven Cyclone girls qualified for the state meet in Fort Dodge Saturday Oct. 28, including Juniors Lindsey Sonderman who took third place overall with a time of 19:08.65, and Brylee Schechinger who finished 12th with 20:16.05.
“I’m happy that we came here for state qualifying,” Sonderman said. “I’m also really excited, because here was where a lot of my competition was, so it was basically like a pre-state race, so I kind of can have a game plan for state.”
The other qualifiers included Emily Schechinger, Allie Anderson, Kayla Anderson, Lily Schechinger, and Taylor Bieker. The Cyclones took a second place finish as a team with a total of 98 points, 12 ahead of Clear Creek-Amana, who had 110.
“We didn’t have much information to go on,” said Cyclone Head Coach Zach Klaassen. “We always try to compare times and compare places against other teams that we race against. Everybody did their job, and we ended up getting them by 12 points.”
For the boys, nobody qualified for state meet. The top Cyclone was Ian Shelton who finished 32nd overall with a time of 17:51.34. As a team the boys finished in ninth place with 248, with Pella taking the top spot overall with 21 points.
Klaassen was still proud of their efforts despite nobody punching their ticket to Fort Dodge.
“He [Shelton] is a competitor,” he said. “He just barely missed out last year. I think he was hoping to have a better performance today, but he has nothing to hang his head about. All those boys competed the whole way around. Obviously, you want to move on, but it just doesn’t always happen that way.”
The Cyclone girls will have 10 days to rest before the state meet, but Klaassen still plans to have them practice between now and then and be well prepared for that day.
“We’ve got to get at least one more hard workout in,” he added. “We will definitely get some work done before then, but around Wednesday we will start tapering pretty hard.”
The senior boys who competed will not return next season. Klaassen spoke on behalf of their contributions and is optimistic about the future of Cyclone cross country.
“They’re going to be missed,” Klaassen said. “They have a legacy. Some of these kids started with us a freshman. They are the reason we have the largest numbers we’ve ever had. We’ve got some good ones coming in. We’re excited about the program and where it’s at.”