Coach Jeremy Collins’ goal for the Warrenton Warriors this season is to make progress throughout the course of the season.
This year’s Warrenton cross country team returns experience from last year’s team. They return senior Madelyn Marschel and junior Wyatt Claiborne, who both qualified for the state cross country meet last season. Marschel is looking to qualify for the state meet for the fourth time after qualifying each of her first three seasons.
Collins stressed as a whole, the team is ahead of where they were a season ago. They were aided by seven runners participating in the West Plaines Cross Country camp.
“That was a good experience for them,” Collins said. “Kind of challenged them.”
Over the course of the first few weeks of practice, the Warriors’ focus has been on building a base and working to get stronger. Collins stressed the season can wear on runners.
Collins is happy with the early performance of the athletes in practice. However, he stressed it is different running in practice and competing in a race at a meet.
“From what I’ve seen so far, it seems like we are a little ahead of what we were last year,” Collins said. “But once you get into meets, that could be totally different.”
Collins’ goal for the team as a whole is to continue to make progress throughout the season. He noted runners are at different spots with their times. Collins hopes Claiborne and Marschel can return to the state tournament this season.
“Maddie is a three-time state qualifier,” Collins said. “ I know she’s hoping to go back and also looking at times, I know she probably wants to break 21 minutes. And she’s looking really good. And then Wyatt qualified for state last year. So I know he wants to go to state and improve on last year’s performance. One of his goals is to break 17 because he was at 17:05 last year.”
Collins stressed both Claiborne and Marschel are good teammates, which helps the rest of the team.
Overall, Collins has high hopes for the Warriors to improve as a team this season.
“We just have a good group and it’s kind of hard to know exactly what they can do,” Collins said. “But if they really want to have a lot of success, I think they can. It’s just going and doing the hard workouts and pushing themselves and not putting any limits on them. I think we could have a really good season. I think we definitely will improve on last year.”
The Warriors begin the season at the Ft. Zumwalt North Invite. The meet begins at 8 a.m. Saturday.