Nerdsletter 4/16/25

Contributor: The Nerd

Performance database

There were some great performances in the past week and our performance database has captured most of them. If you click on '2025 Track' at https://www.preprunningnerd.com/rankings you can find the Top 15 performances for each Class and each event.

We know there are a few flaws. For example, the online results for Friday's Waverly meet are in the process of being corrected, but for now the Elkhorn boys relays results from Friday are showing up as Elkhorn North. Another issue is that when meets are still 'In Review' on athletic.net, like the JCC meet on 4/7, they don't feed into our database, so we have to go through and manually add any top marks. There are surprisingly few non-athletic.net meets so far this year, so that has simplified our work.

We've added a new feature on our database. After struggling to read the NSAA State records page on my phone, we decided to add the State record to each event so you can compare the gap between the record and this season's marks.

Just to be clear, we know the database isn't perfect. If you're aware of an error or omission, send us a DM or email jayslagle@hotmail.com and we'll do our best to correct it.

Records

Speaking of records, we appear to have three new records thus far this season:

Braden Lofquest of Gretna East broke the Class B and All-Class 1600 record on April 3 at Bellevue West, running 4:06.80. Braden held the previous Class B record at 4:12.11 from 5/1/24; Juan Gonzalez of Fremont held the previous All-Class record after running 4:08.61 at State last May.
Austin Carrera of Hastings broke the Class B 3200 record on Friday, April 11 at Waverly, running 9:01.62. The previous record of 9:08.10 was set by Riley Boonstra of Norris at the 2024 State meet. For reasons unclear to me, Riley's 9:02.25 from the KU Relays on 4/19/24 was never recognized as a State record, but Austin topped that mark as well.
Clara Spargo of Dundy County Stratton was 2nd in the Cambridge 200 on Saturday, finishing behind Adi Hunt of Southern Valley, but her time of 24.86 was plenty fast enough to break the Class D record. Karol McKenzie of Elwood had the oldest girls' record on the books, running 25.20 in 1975. Clara set her record running into a slight headwind, measuring -1.8 meters/second. That marks Clara's second State record; she set the current Class D 400 record of 56.74 at the 2024 State meet. Here's a fun tidbit about Clara (and her sister Abi) - they were at the 2021 Olympic Trials in Eugene and held up the sign below that made the World Athletics social media account:

Later that day, Clara got her selfie with Allyson Felix.

And one near record...

The Fremont boys varsity team headed to California last weekend, thanks to the fundraising generosity of their community. While most of the team competed at the West Coast Classic, a Fremont 4x1600 squad of Noah Miller, Jase Laday, Mason Nau, Juan Gonzalez compete at the Arcadia Invite on Friday night, and Juan ran the 3200 at Arcadia on Saturday night. The 4x1600 won their seeded race in 17:30.43 and finished 4th overall. While there isn't an official 4x1600 State record recognized by the NSAA, Coach McMahon believes this is the new record.

The next night, Juan finished 18th in 8:51.83, just above his existing State record of 8:51.46. It was a curious race. The field of 37 boys included five sub-4:00 milers from the US and abroad, and 29 of the boys ran a sub-9:00 3200. However, in a meet and race designed to produce fast times, the field inexplicably and collectively sat on the pace, with every boy going through 1600 at 4:28-4:33. The winner ran the first 1600 in 4:29 before closing in 4:10 to finish in 8:39, while Juan ran 4:31/4:20. Juan has now run three in-season sub-9:00 3200's matching the mark of Millard West's Seth Hirsch, the previous 3200 State record holder. We suspect Juan has at least one more sub-9:00 effort in him before he moves onto Oregon.

Sport parents, play your role

If you're a track parent or athlete who ignores our work during the fall, you may have missed one of the best articles we've ever posted. Last September I approached Jeremy Haselhorst, the Papio South girls distance coach and a certified mental performance coach, to ask him how parents should support their student athletes. I posed that question just minutes after a cross country meet where I heard parents scream "GO FASTER!", "You've got to pass that group in front of you!" and all sorts of other things that seemed unhelpful to the athletes, particularly those at the back of the race. A few weeks later we posted Jeremy's article, "Sports Parents, Play Your Role." Please consider spending some time with it.

Middle School Monday

It took three weeks, but we finally received responses to our Middle School Monday social media posts. As you know, it's a full-time hobby to stay abreast of high school T&F, so we need your help to shine the spotlight on junior high kids. Our results page includes a record number of JH meets, and we included some of those performances in our MSM post:

Titus Sievers, 8th, Elkhorn VV - 11.09 100

Liam Thompsen, 8th, Gretna - 54.08 400

Jagger Wiedel, 8th, St. Stephen - 20-05 LJ

Kamden Cupples, 7th, St. Wenceslaus - 4:57 1600

Evan Cameron, 8th, Columbus Scotus - 55.05 400, 5-11 HJ, 20-02.5 LJ

Kellen Brady, 8th, Mary Our Queen - 17-03 LJ

Stacia Grosserode, 8th, Lincoln - 33'-08" TJ

Baylie Chapek, 7th, Bishop Neumann - 13.02 100, 27.57 200

Aleah McDonald, 8th, Westside - 24-08 SP

Stella Simms, 8th, St. Albert - 27.31 200

In response, here are a few of the outstanding performances that our followers shared:

Landon Ideus, 8th, Johnson Brock - 6-00 HJ and 37-06.50 TJ at Mudecas meet
Angel Rodriguez and Alex Pospisil, 8th, Wood River - 15.90 and 16.05 in the 100 hurdles at Wood River, both breaking the school record
Maximus Mora, 8th, GI Trinity Lutheran - 53.74 400 at Walnut Invite
Gretna MS boys - 47.71 4x100 at Elkhorn/Baumert
Reed Carey, 7th, Lincoln Christian - 16.21 100 33" hurdles and 28.73 200 30" hurdles
Graham Jansen, 7th, Gretna - 17-09 LJ at Ridge triangular
Thomas Wilcoxson, 7th, Gretna - 41-02.5 SP at Gretna (the Wilcoxson tradition continues!)
Grant Poessnecker, 8th, West Holt - 45-07.5 SP and 143-07 discus at West Holt
Avery Arens, 8th, Crofton - another beast from the Arens dynasty ran a 5:22 1600 and 2:31 800 at the Cedar Invite.
Ava Wilson, 8th, Plattsmouth - 4-10 HJ at Platteview
Parker Palser, 8th, Gering - 33-10.5 TJ (broke 12-year old meet record) and 15-02 LJ at BMS Quad
Penn Vergil, 6th, Alliance St. Agnes - 4-10 HJ, 13-08 LJ, 5:56 1600, 1:06 400 at Chadron
Lydia Cone, 8th, Pierce - 108-03 discus and 32-06 SP at Stanton
Aspen Creek (Gretna) - 1:58.77 SMR setting the school record and Elkhorn/Baumert record
Madison Vetter, Zion Lutheran Kearney - 1:04.64 400 and 2:50.78 800 at Ravenna
Kinlee Hinton, 8th, Adams Central - 12.84 100 and 27.09 200 at Wood River
Harper Fish, 8th, Adams Central - 12.87 100 and 27.35 200 at Wood River
Braelynn Strong, 7th, Elm Creek - 31-04 SP at Wood River

Look for our post next week to give a shout out to performances that are posted this week.

NSAA proposals

The NSAA provides a handy flowchart on its website that explains how new rules are proposed and passed by its member schools. Unfortunately, the flowchart doesn't give us much of an idea why good proposals fail and bad proposals succeed. As I understand it, the state is divided into six Districts, with the athletic director from each high school designated as a representative for District meetings. Any athletic director can submit a proposal by October 1st. An athletic director's proposal is first voted on by just the athletic directors at his/her District in November. If the proposal passes, it is then voted on by all six Districts at a January meeting. If four of the six Districts approve the proposal, it is advanced to the NSAA representative assembly in April for final approval.

We were following three proposals related to cross country that were proposed this legislative year.

Wisner-Pilger took up my cause and proposed that each cross country District meet would qualify 10 athletes who were not part of State qualifying teams. This was a reaction to the trend where Districts where two powerful teams, particularly in Class A and B, were squeezing out individual qualifiers from less successful programs. For example, if the historically strong Fremont and LSW boys teams where assigned to the same District meet, those two teams might take 14 of the 15 individual qualifier spots. (We first wrote about this in the 'There Has to be a Number' section of our October 18, 2023 Nerdsletter at https://www.preprunningnerd.com/post/101823nl). Alas, this proposal had a tie vote at the November District Three meeting, with only 3 of 53 ADs abstaining, so it did not advance to January voting.
Lincoln Southwest proposed that the Class A cross country District seeding process be based on a team's four fastest meet results of the season. With most schools outside of Class A abstaining from voting in January, this proposal easily passed in four Districts and should be implemented next fall. This is more of an 'inside baseball' proposal that should slightly improve the distribution of teams at Districts, although I suspect that coaches will eventually adjust to it by going to more meets on fast courses.
The Southwest athletic director proposed increasing the number of State team trophies for golf, track and cross country from two to four to be consistent with the number of trophies awarded in basketball and volleyball. The proposal noted that there are far more teams competing in these three sports than those competing in basketball and volleyball, and yet the NSAA awards 50% fewer team trophies. Stunningly, the proposal was only approved by District 5, and was voted down by more than 2-to-1 in Districts 1, 4 and 6.

I've included the three proposals at this link. Try as I might, I'm not including the logic for why the first and third proposals were defeated - because I'm not sure what the logic might be.

This and that

We've made a lot of progress on expanding our commitment list for the Class of 2025, and we hope to post that in the next week. If you haven't reached out to us with a XC or T&F commitment, please DM us or send an email to jayslagle@hotmail.com.
Barrett Wilke of Stanton had a legal shot put of 61-04 at Wisner Pilger last Saturday, but the official working that event told us that Barrett's final throw, barely a scratch, went 2.5-3.0 foot further than that. How did he know? Because the only divots beyond 55 feet belonged to Barrett. This Friday Barrett, who has a season-best 62-11.5, will be at Omaha Bryan to match up against the state leader, Ike Ackerman of Central. Ike has thrown 64-08 and is just 1.5" from the Class A record held by Larry Station. I'm a runner, not a thrower, but I have to imagine the head-to-head competition between two high-level throwers could result in something special. (Who says we don't care about throwers?)
The entry list for the KU Relays meet this weekend is 63 pages long so we're not going to invest the time to look for the 100 or so Nebraska high school athletes competing there. However, a few stick out. Class B studs Kendall Zavala, Atlee Wallman and Cece Kramper are all racing the 1600 and 3200, and that will probably be the only time that Kramper sees the Norris power duo before State. Kennedy Bailey of Dundy County Stratton (DCS) is the Class D season leader in the throws (and All-Class leader in the shot), and she'll compete in both events. Brock Bailey of DCS, sits 3rd on the All-Class shot put leaderboard, also will compete in both throws; national leader Jackson Cantwell (73-06.25) headlines the field. Clara Spargo, the Class D record holder in the 200 and 400, will run the 100 and 400 at KU. Assuming the weather holds up, we should see some great marks out of that meet.
In regards to Jackson Cantwell, Tony Chapman of Harvest Sports just reminded me that his mother is Teri Steer-Cantwell, a Crete native who won the 1996 NCAA shot put title while competing for SMU, won bronze medals in the shot put at the 1999 World Indoor Championships and the Pan American Games, and competed in the 2000 Olympics in Sydney. She's a member of the Nebraska High School Hall of Fame, was the 1993 World Herald and LJS female athlete of the year, and earned eight Class B State medals in the throws plus two top-four finishes IN THE LONG JUMP!
I've been asked if there are any remaining head-to-head matchups among the top distance boys (Gonzalez, Lofquest, Carrera, Rice) prior to State that might result in fireworks. At this point, I don't see schedules lining up for another 1600 race. However, we've already seen Gonzalez run a 4:04 off-season indoor 1600 after being paced through 800 by Jase Laday, and Carrera ran alone for most of his 9:01 3200 last week. I know that Fremont, Hastings and Skutt all have other athletes who could easily pace 800 meters in two minutes or less. I also wouldn't be surprised - because this is what the running community does - to see competitors from another school offering their pacing services to help one of these boys get the record. My can't-miss prediction: the All-Class 1600 will go below 4:05 this season.
Last week Karsen Olsen of Lyons Decatur Northeast became the first girl in program history to compete in the pole vault. That reminds me of an article we wrote a few years ago - Be the First.

Photos

We had several DMs last week saying that our photos aren't listed by meet & date. Over 95% of our photos are uploaded as albums with meet names but unfortunately we can't control how FB delivers individual photos. You can see albums at https://facebook.com/PrepRunningNerd/photos_albums or a chronological listing of all 40+ meets we've shot this season at https://preprunningnerd.com/2022.

As of Tuesday night, the Nerds have published over 5000 photos from meets last week, including Westside, Adams Central, DC Aquinas, Dundy County Stratton, Hartington, Sandhills/Basset, Doane collegiate midweek, Creek Valley, Wood River, Wayne, Lincoln Southwest, Thayer Central JH, Benson, Doane/NWU dual, Millard South, Cambridge field events, Perkins County and Fremont's two meets in California. We still owe you photos from Homer, Sioux City and Wisner Pilger. Here are a few of our favorites:

Starter etiquette

As you probably know, the Nerd team is composed mostly of people who have never worked in traditional media roles: we're accountants, doctors, teachers, businesswomen, students, etc. To make sure we don't run afoul of meet officials, we do our best to introduce ourselves to the official starter and ask them to tell us when we wander into no-Nerd land. Because we do that, we've struck up some great friendships with these officials, many of whom are either volunteering or barely getting paid enough to cover the cost of their ammunition. We often take selfies with the officials, but at the West Coast Classic we experienced a first: Claudius Shropshire asked us to post some glamour shots of him on our Instagram account. That's a small price to pay to get great shots of athletes.

Photos from the past

Former Fremont track coach Bryce Lambley has a treasure trove of old track photos and videos, and he shares them to us every now and then. Here is his latest photo along with his description:

"We live now in a heckuva age for top-tier distance running in the state. Well, this race was the Gold Standard in Nebraska for a looooong time. It's from the 1977 State Track Meet. I'm not 100% sure this is the 2-mile, but given no one else is in the frame, I'm almost positive it is the 2-mile and not the mile. Paul Schulz of Omaha Burke set a State Record of 9:08.3 (would convert to 9:04.9 hand time for 3200m, or 9:05.14 FAT) while being pushed for much of the race by Brian Dunnigan of Lincoln East, who ended up at 9:22.3. Schulz's record stood for a long time. Dana Carne of Omaha North ran 9:06.57 in 1999 but that was for 3200m which is statistically inferior to 9:05.14 (FAT conversion). Colby Wissel of Kearney ran 8:58.95 for 2 miles in 2004, so I believe Schulz's record (to those who believe in honoring the past and converting times) lasted 27 years."

Could you lend us a vote?

The all-volunteer Nerd team has been nominated for an OSCA! The Omaha Sports Commission Awards include an honor for the Sports Media Person of the Year, and voting runs from April 7 to April 21. If you appreciate the work we do for Nebraska high school XC and T&F, please consider voting for us at https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScjJUlhcTOJsiO5DY7CE1U20SQOQeGApVtgaw1FGswpBNU5tA/viewform. The other nine categories are far more interesting than the media one, so you'll get a chance to vote for those categories too. Of interest: Omaha Westside alum Stella Miner has been nominated for female athlete of the year.

Summer camps

We're going to start listing summer camps now because we're too tired in late May to do it. Here are a few that have crossed our desk:

Eyes Up camp at Creighton - Coach Gannon offers two two-day camps in July. Details at https://www.bluejayrunningcamps.com/nextlevel.
Cozad cross country camp - Cozad offers a five-hour camp on Tuesday, July 15. Speakers include college coaches Matt Beisel (Concordia), Brad Jenny (Doane) and Ryan Mahoney (Hastings). Click here for the flier.
Caleb Franklin, assistant track coach at Anselmo-Merna, and his track club Quantum Athletics will be holding its 4th annual Summer Elite Speed Camp two days a week all of June and July for incoming 9-12th graders looking to improve their sprinting. Contact Caleb at cfranklin.sprints@gmail.com for more information.
From June 17 to July 31, O'Neill St. Mary's coach Micheal Peterson (aka Hurdle Nerd) will be offering Hurdle School classes on Tuesday and Thursday mornings from 7:00-8:00 am. The Tuesday sessions are tentatively set for O'Neill and the Thursday sessions will be at West Holt. There is no cost but a parent must sign a waiver. Contact micheal.peterson@icloud.com for more info.

Summer races

I'm also going to periodically list races that have been sent to me. The Omaha Running Club and Lincoln Track Club are better resources for races in Omaha and Lincoln, but I got tired of saying that we don't give information on road races.

I'm hoping to be healthy and near Valentine on Saturday, June 7th for the Sandhills Marathon. I wrote about the marathon at https://www.preprunningnerd.com/post/sandhillsmarathon after I ran it last year. It's a great race, particularly if you want to get away from the crowds.
The non-profit Abide organization is hosting a 5k in Omaha on Saturday, June 14 to benefit inner-city disadvantaged kids, particularly those in the African American community. You can find more details at https://www.abideomaha.org/better-together-5k.
Friend-of-the-Nerds Matt Musiel is one of the organizers for the annual North Bend Old Settlers 5k being held on Saturday, June 21. A few Nebraska coaching legends got their start at North Bend. Details at https://secure.getmeregistered.com/get_information.php?event_id=140672.
Former Omaha North XC coach Mark Gudgel is launching a race in Valentine on August 2 with distances from one mile to fifty-two kilometers, and the marathon will be a Boston qualifier. The majority of the course is along the Cowboy Trail and you can even sign up a 7-person team for the 5k. Go to https://valentinemarathon.com/ for more information.

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First published at www.preprunningnerd.com by Jay Slagle on April 16, 2025. If you find an error, shoot us an e-mail at jayslagle@hotmail.com and we'll get it fixed.

Like this coverage of the Nebraska T&F and cross country scene? There's more of this at www.preprunningnerd.com. Check out the Blog tab for our frequent stories and the Results tab for every Nebraska high school meet we can find. If you want to see meet photos or just need to kill a few hours on social media, follow us on Twitter and Instagram @PrepRunningNerd or on Facebook at www.facebook.com/preprunningnerd.

Finally, if you think runners, jumpers and throwers are the best things on earth, you'll enjoy our two most popular articles. In 2018 we published "The Runner with the Broken Heart" about a high school boy who finished last in nearly every race he ran. In 2022 we published, "The Fall and Rise of Emmett " a story about a high school triple jumper who became a quadrapalegic after a swimming accident.