Sonderman wins again; Cyclones finish in second place
Cyclone Junior Lindsey Sonderman is starting off the season strong. She won the Lewis Central Invitational Saturday morning in Council Bluffs with a time of 19:24.4 finishing 61 seconds ahead of the second place finisher, Freshman Grace Berglund from Glenwood. Sonderman has won all three events to this point in the season.
“She’s very gritty,” said Cyclones Head Coach Zach Klaassen. “I thought the second half of the race she really pulled away. She got on those hills and really made a little bit more separation. When we faced them at Glenwood earlier this year, she beat her by about 40 seconds and today was 1:01, so just quite the runner. She’s steady and she doesn’t slow down and I thought she did a great job of just attacking the hills today.”
It wasn’t just Sonderman though who dominated as the Cyclones managed to take a second place finish on both the boys and girls team with multiple Cyclones finishing in the top 15.
“I thought both teams came out with a plan and I thought they both did a pretty good job of trying to execute that plan today,” Klaassen said. “I thought they ran well. I thought we had some good groupings out there where we had some Harlan kids running together. Overall, it was a good effort by both squads.”
On the boys side, Ian Shelton was the Cyclones top runner, finishing in eighth place, Keaton Heileson in 11th, Joseph Bragg in 12th, Erik Heslink in 13th and Grant Petersen in 14th.
On the girls side, Allie Anderson took seventh place, Brylee Schechinger finished in 11th and Taylor Bieker came in 15th.
“I think the trust in the training because when you get into the course like that where you have to run a repeat route and you already know there’s big hills out there,” Klaassen added. “You can really get inside your head and start to doubt yourself, but today they believed in themselves and that’s something they’ve been doing all year, especially on the boys side, I think we’ve taken really great strides this year in a positive direction compared to where we’ve been the last couple of years.”
The next event for the Cyclones cross country team will be Tuesday at 6 p.m. at Storm Lake High School where they will be one of 11 schools competing.
“We need a couple of days to rest for sure,” Klaassen said. “Monday we’ll just have a quick 15-minute tune-up, light run probably. Tuesday we’ll head to Storm Lake and see some different teams that we don’t see the rest of the year. That course up there is a lot like Fort Dodge. It’s on a nice golf course. We’re looking for a good race.”