BURTON—Regardless of the sport, coaches always look for improvement from one game or event to the next.
Cardinal cross country coach Tyler Jones was pleased with what he saw out of his Huskies following two meets last week.
The Huskies opened the season at the Lakeside War on the Shore on Monday and closed out the week at the Berkshire Early Bird Invitational on Saturday at Kent State’s Geauga Campus.
“Last week over at Lakeside, that was an extremely difficult course and we came off of another hard course, so coming into this week we’re just looking at the times to see what we can do in the future,” Jones said. “We have a new team. Young isn’t really the word to describe it since we have five seniors, but three of them have never run cross country before. Some of them ran track but we’re just trying to learn longer distances and see where we can go with that.”
Senior Meagan Maddox had an impressive week with a 19th place finish at Lakeside and a 68th place finish at Berkshire.
Maddox ran a time of 24:56 on Monday and knocked off two minutes on Saturday as she finished the Early Bird Invitational in 22:47.
“This meet was good for her,” Jones said. “Meagan had a strong performance and we’re looking to get her as ready as we can this season and see how far we can take her.”
Sophomores Jenna Ayer, Abigail Geesling, Autumn Zak and Hanna Sauberan and senior Ashley Peterson also ran at Berkshire.
Ayer finished in 26:28, Geesling clocked a time of 26:42, Zak finished in 27:02, Peterson ran a time of 27:20 and Sauberan finished in 27:32.
Seniors Brendan White and Benjamin Lobdell showed improvement at Berkshire.
White finished in 20:09 and Lobdell ran a time of 20:15.
“Brendan and Benjamin did a nice job too,” Jones said. “We’re still progressing and training hard and I expect better performances in the future.”
Senior Joey Bradesca (21:06), freshman Gene Henrie (21:19) and sophomore Clayton Sauberan (25:07) also competed for the Huskies at Berkshire.
Cardinal next will run at the Frank Gibas Invitational at Kenston on Saturday.
“That’s another big meet,” Jones said. “We’re really front-loading the competition. We’ll get into some smaller meets and get the times down even lower before we get to the conference meet.”
