The Haines High School cross-country team won’t host a meet this year, but runners still will make their season debut close to home Friday in Skagway.
The season slate also includes events in Petersburg and Sitka, plus the regional meet in Ketchikan and state in Anchorage.
“The team is pretty young this year,” said coach Tara Bicknell. “It’s been really exciting to introduce them to their first running sport.”
About 20 athletes are out for the team, with senior Keegan Sundberg as the lone returning state qualifier.
“He is definitely our leader this year, with all his experience,” Bicknell said.
The Haines boys finished seventh out of 10 full squads in Region V in 2013. Returning regional runners for the Glacier Bears include Sundberg, junior Neil Little and sophomore Dawson Evenden. The team graduated Chevy Fowler, Zeke Frank and Isaac Wing.
Little prepared for the season by running the recent Totem Trot 5K in Haines. He said the event, with runners carrying cards to be “punched” at a series of totem poles in town, was “a refresher that not all races are the same,” given the varied courses throughout Southeast.
Two new bright spots on the team, Bicknell said, are junior Casey Bradford and freshman Hudson Sage.
The girls’ squad will be without the services of three-time state qualifier Zayla Asquith-Heinz, who moved to the Marshall Islands. She placed 26th at state last year as a junior among small-school entrants (1A, 2A and 3A).
Bicknell said junior Jenae Larson has become a team leader. She placed third among the Glacier Bear girls at regionals, trailing Asquith-Heinz and graduate Libby Jacobson. Serena Badgley and Rebekah Green also graduated from that fifth-place squad, while Natalia Taylor is back for her senior year as a Glacier Bear.
Junior Destinee Cowart joined the team this year to improve her conditioning for basketball season. In an interview last week, she said she started “super out of shape,” but she is set to make the trip to Skagway. “It’s going to be a lot of running and a lot of sore calves.”
Coach Bicknell said 10 Glacier Bears will travel to Skagway for the meet. Several other team members are not yet eligible due to a requirement to participate in at least 10 practices prior to the first competition.
Bicknell said practices have featured cross-training, circuit training, weightlifting, intervals and sprint work. She said teammates “empower each other and push each other,” and at the season-opening meet, the Glacier Bears will put pacing and strategy to the test.
“It’s about all the things you learn, like talking down that little voice that tells you to stop,” Bicknell said.