Tuesday, October 14, 2003

It's the day the Western Panthers have been looking forward to for nearly a year.

It's the day the goal of winning the IHSAA Marion Boys and Girls Cross Country Sectional championships could come true.

And for the Panthers' girls, that dream is still alive, but without senior Jim Jackson, the Western boys will find winning the team championship in today's race at Indiana Wesleyan University a long shot.

Jackson will miss today's sectional with a pulled right quadricep. It's an injury that will likely keep him out of Saturday's Marion Regional as well.

"Jim's been running since Friday of last week and he's running, not jogging. He's putting in tempo miles," Panther coach Dana Neer said. "He's been on the bike and in the pool but he's not ready to go yet.

"Initially, he couldn't lift the leg or get up and down the stairs at school. Now, it hurts when he turns corners and prolonged runs hurt, too."

The Panthers figured to be in a tough battle for first with defending champion Marion and Oak Hill, but now, Neer is setting his sights on third.

"We definitely feel we're a top-three team. With Jim able to run, we'd be shooting the best we could for the title," Neer said. "But, we're trying to be realistic and staying within our level and not do anything desperate. We plan on advancing to the regional and doing our best."

The Panthers have one silver bullet in their collection of runners -- senior Kyle Walsh, the defending individual champion. Last season, he pulled away from Marion's Alex Harvey in the final 400 meters to win the race.

"I think Kyle was running a little bit tentative and also was a chaser last year. This year, he knows he's the frontrunner," Neer said. "To beat him, it's going to take an unbelievable race but quite few mistakes on Kyle's part too.

"He's familiar with this course and he's going to take it hard from the beginning. He's feeling good ... and he's right where we want him at time wise. He's in the 15:50s and starting to come down each meet. He's very familiar with the competition and he isn't going to take them lightly."

Challengers to Walsh include his cousin, Taylor's Christopher Sinnett, Marion's Josh Foss, Dustin Rose of Oak Hill and Kokomo's Bryan Phillips.

The Marion-Oak Hill battle may depend on the health of the Golden Eagles, Kokomo coach Ricke Stucker said.

"Oak Hill hasn't been healthy once. If they put it all together, they have potent to win. I thought they would win early in the season, but they've had a bunch of injuries," the Wildkats' coach said. "Now it's Marion. After Western, I think Northwestern can get fourth. I figure it will be us competing with Eastern for fifth."

On the girls side of the equation, however, the Panthers are healthy and looking strong. Stucker, for one, sees no one turning in a strong challenge to Western's girls.

"After Western," Stucker said, "I think the race is for second and third. There's Oak Hill and Marion and Northwestern. Northwestern could get second. We're just hoping to get fifth if we can."

That's the same group Neer believes will advance to the regional.

"This has been a goal of ours for the last year. We'd hoped to win [in 2002] and we came out runner-up," he said. "We talked about 'let's take this thing next year.' We solidified that over the summer. Now, we have to go out and give it our best shot and hopefully take the sectional championship trophy home."

After dealing with all sorts of illnesses the last few weeks, Neer believes his team is ready to go.

"We've bounced back pretty good. Anna Hurlock is well and running very, very good. Brittany Stellhorn is off her bronchitis and she's herself and Cassie Myer is over her sickness," he said.

"Becky Elliott isn't 100 percent but she'll be racing. Her 80 or 85 percent is a very strong position to be in. Becky's trained all year long and has lots of racing under her belt. We want her to go out with Cassie and Megan [Clearwaters], see where she's at, hang on as long as she can and let her teammates pull her on."

The battle for the individual title could be a good one. Eastern senior Laura Boltz surprised a lot of people with her win last year and she's been running well this season. However, she'll be expecting a challenge from Panther sophomore Annina Gruber, who beat her in the Mid-Indiana Conference last week, and Oak Hill's Kristen Reiff.