Back on Grass: 2024 Valley Kick Off Recap

Aug 17, 2024

The weekend marked the first official weekend of competition across the state with many schools electing to get an early preview of the LaVern Gibson Championship Course. The venue will host several top notch meets this fall including the IHSAA State Championship in 11 weeks. On Saturday morning many athletes were able to finally showcase the work they put in this summer as well as get a sense of where their fitness and mental toughness lies with the competition season now underway.

With many top names in Indiana now competing at the next level, new storylines are starting to emerge as new faces find their way towards the front. Varsity Division and Junior Varsity Division races were contested at the annual Valley Kick Off meet with many notable team and individual performances being displayed. Find recaps from both varsity divisions below.

Formatted Results | Race Videos | Misc. Photos

Girls Varsity Division

In both varsity races there would also be a new champion with both graduating this past spring. Last year's winner Joey Rastrelli now competes for IU Bloomington which left the title up for grabs especially since 8 of the top 10 finishers from last year were all seniors.

Several girls took on the challenge though as five girls would all hit the 4K mark within one second of another with an additional 3-4 in striking distance. Coming down the final stretch it looked like Sadie Foley would hang on for the win to lead the Greyhounds deep pack of runners. However with less than 200m to go Macey Thompson made up her mind that she was not getting beat today as she gradually made up ground before passing Sadie with about 75m to go to take the win and help Lake Central to a runner-up team finish with 69 points.

Both runners narrowly missed the podium in their respective events in track this past spring with Saddie running a 4:59 to place 12th in the 1600m and Macey running a 2:15 to place 13th in the 800m. This would be a MASSIVE breakout cross country race for Macey as her PR from last year was a 20:23 where she would place 200th at the state meet. This means that she took off 1:25 from her peak form of last fall and was able to knock off an all-state runner who placed 18th at the XC championship last season. This season should be an exciting one as Macey will look to make some noise.

Sadie would earn the individual runner-up position which would help further lower Carmel's dominant team score where they would win with 37 points over the 40 schools that scored for the girls. The Greyhounds had their entire scoring lineup placed in the top 11 and consisted of Larkin Taylor (5th), Olivia Mundt (9th), Annabel Pollert (10th), and Margo Halle (11th). The team has high hopes at a state title this fall and entered the season ranked #2 in the MileSplit Indiana Girls preseason rankings.

Individually, Dakotah Moore would take third place and Lexi Kollbaum, who led most of the race leading up to the 3600m mark, would earn a 4th place finish. North Central would round out the top three for team scores with 131 points being led by Kaelina Matthews.

Boys Varsity Division

For the past two years we have seen Will Conway dominate this meet knocking off notable names with convincing victories in 2022 and 2023. With Conway graduated and set to compete for Oklahoma State after the Tennessee coaching change, a new champion would be crowned this year.

The race would feature a battle between two rising seniors who were coincidentally also the top two returners entering the meet. Liam Bauschke would take home runner-up last year with Shane Conroy placing 4th in 2023. Both would return later that season to place on the podium at XC state. This past spring they would meet again at the state meet 3200m where Shane placed in 6th with a 9:02 while Liam narrowly missed the podium with a 9:13.

The duo would break away from the rest of the field by the two mile mark before Shane started to widen the gap over Liam around the 4K mark. In the he last kilometer, the gap would slowly increase before the final stretch where Shane would become the lone runner to break the 16 minute mark for the opening meet going 15:52.7 with Liam being just shy of breaking this barrier going 16:00.2 and finishing runner-up for the second year in a row. Shane's winning effort would help Portage to an eighth place finish out of the 39 schools that scored for the boys.

Evansville F.J. Reitz got a solid start to the season winning the meet with a total of 79 points. The Panthers would place five in the race's top 27 overall and had depth with six being in the top 36. Senior Jackson Nolan would lead the way with a strong third place finish with a mark of 16:13.9. Other scorers for the team would include Carter Zieren (10th), Brice Johnson (20th), Will Dierlam (22nd), and Sawyer Mossberger (27th). The team would come in ranked #6 in the MileSplit Indiana Boys preseason rankings and would knock off #1 Bloomington North who had 96 points.

Bloomington North, however, looked to be missing Jack Holden who had the fourth fastest time of the returners from last fall for the team. With Jack in the lineup there would have been a very close battle for the team title. Mt. Vernon would finish third with 116 points led by Ahmed Saleh.