The Glenvar cross country team will hit the road in competition for the first time next Wednesday, August 31, with a meet at Radford University. There will be 13 schools competing over the campus course.
For the first time in five years Glenvar won’t be led by Carly Wilkes, possibly the best in a long line of talented Glenvar girls’ distance runners. She’s now running for Furman University, and boys standout Daniel Zearfoss also graduated in the spring.
“While it’s impossible to replace decorated athletes like Carly Wilkes and Daniel Zearfoss, we have a great mixture of veteran leadership and talented underclassmen that I hope will make for an exciting season for our program,” said coach Amanda Spradlin. “Though we do not have an official middle school cross country team, we have many young runners at the middle school level who will contribute to the team in years to come.
Returning contributors from last year’s girls’ varsity team include senior Molly McCroskey, junior Joanna Killeen and Junior Emma Pope. Returning runners from the boys’ varsity team are senior Davis Norman, junior Charlie Horrell, junior Tucker Henderson and sophomore Aiden Woodie.
Newcomers Spradlin has high hopes for are senior Lauren Micheal and junior Kailynn Moses for the girls. Additionally, Glenvar has five freshmen that will look to make an impact immediately, including Everly Shanks, Anna Hall, Jenna Taylor, Emily-Claire Hartma, and Leah McMahan.
First year runners for the boys will be senior Heath Bowker and junior Caeden Bowker, who both transferred to the area. Also looking to make an immediate impact are freshmen Alex Rottkamp, Sean Headrick and Tyler Davis.
“As a program, our goals are more process focused rather than outcome focused,” said Spradlin. “We want to get better as a group each week and that is the main goal every season.”
