NorthWood’s Brady Hunsberger ran a career-best 16:40 at last week’s regional to help the Panthers earn a semi-state berth. InkFreeNews file photo by Mike Deak

By Mike Deak
InkFreeNews

HUNTINGTON – Gaining experience might be the order of the day for the NorthWood boys cross country team.

With the deck stacked against it coming into a top-heavy New Haven Cross Country Semi-state, NorthWood would have to pull some kind of upset to get out, but its not an impossible endeavor. That’s why they send ’em out to run.

The New Haven field in recent years has become ultra tough with the addition of a pair of suburban Indianapolis powerhouses coming north in Fishers and Hamilton Southeastern. The Fishers team is ranked fifth and HSE is sixth in the final regular season poll, and they aren’t alone among the state’s elite. Fort Wayne Concordia (8), Goshen (19), Penn (21) and Fort Wayne Carroll (25) are all registered to compete, and toss in mega area programs Northridge and Westview into the mixer, and a NorthWood team that has just one senior among its active roster will be a lot of work to do.

“Semi-state gets exponentially more difficult,” noted NorthWood boys coach Justin Bell. “We recognize the challenge we face and look forward to the competitive atmosphere helping us achieve our best performance of the season. Terre Haute or not we plan to make a strong statement with our young squad. Thankfully we raced the Huntington course earlier in the season and raced well. This gives the guys confidence for another solid effort in round two on the course for this season.”

Bell noted the change in venue, as typically the New Haven Semi-state is run in Fort Wayne. But with COVID concerns on Purdue Fort Wayne’s campus, the race location was shifted to Huntington.

The regional did see NorthWood’s ace, junior Brady Hunsberger, race to his finest time of his career at 16:40. The Panthers feature just one senior in Sam Schlatter, and have had a handful of underclassmen pepper their leaderboards this year in Grady Stevenson, Owen Allen, Jordan Burden, Owen Miller and Cole Davies.

NorthWood also has one girl active, and she has a shot at possibly taking one of the ten individual spots. Junior Kaitlin Burden has been a beast all season, winner of the NorthWood Invite and a top-three runner during the conference season. Burden ran a 20:03 to finish runner-up at the sectional and 20:06 to take ninth at the regional.

Wawasee will have one individual active for Saturday in senior Karlson Hand.

The team race will feature the No. 1 squad in the Hoosier State, Fort Wayne Carroll, along with a star-studded field that includes No. 4 Hamilton Southeastern, No. 6 Penn, No. 13 Fort Wayne Concordia, No. 17 Fishers and No. 25 Homestead as well as Northridge, Fort Wayne Dwenger, Oak Hill and South Bend St. Joe in a loaded gauntlet.

Racing at Huntington University begins at 10:30 a.m.