FALL PREVIEW: Park Hill South Girls Cross Country

After winning their conference, earning their highest placement at districts in nine years, and finishing seventh in sectionals last season, the Park Hill South girls cross country team returns seven letter winners in 2012 and are looking stronger than ever.

“We’re pretty excited about the girls we have returning,” head coach Pam Jurgensmeyer said. “We’ve ran a lot and it’s probably the best participation we’ve had from incoming freshmen, so that’s exciting to get that interest at the younger level.”

Leading the way will be three decorated seniors in Lizzy Jurries, De De O’Toole, and Audrey Rothers who’ve been familiar faces at the front of the Panther pack the past couple seasons. Other varsity runners returning from last season include Raven Jennings, Madeline Homoly, Danielle Black, and Erica Guzman who received the team’s top time at last year’s sectionals.

While Park Hill South will return a strong team, they’ll also be dealing with a realignment in conferences, which in their case means a tougher road to defending and repeating as champions.

“We have talked about moving up a conference, which will be quite a challenge with Lee’s Summit West, who has won state a couple times),” Jurgensmeyer said. “That will be a mental and physical challenge.”

Nonetheless, the Panthers are come into the season with confidence and have added an additional, but worthwhile theme to their training.

“The overall theme has been integrity. Cross Country can kind of be a sport where you can be out there alone with no coaches and you’re not all in the same place at once, so it’s easy to cut a corner short or stop early. We want them to show the integrity of putting in hard work and knowing how it feels to put it in.”

They will start the season off at the Liberty Invite on September 1st followed by the Ray-Pec Invite on September 8th.