BOYS CROSS COUNTRY PREVIEW: Park Hill has core group returning

The 2010 campaign for the Park Hill boys cross country team produced mixed results for the Trojans. With their top two runners returning, a handful of guys hoping to fill in behind them, and a pretty hefty group of freshmen looking to try their athleticism in the sport, they'll look to move the team up a few places in the 2011 rankings.

"We did ok last year, we got a few guys coming back from our varsity," head coach Jon Davis said.

As young runners last year, sectional qualifiers senior Nathan Huffer and junior Kainen Utt will be looked to now to lead the pack for Park Hill. Huffer had several good outings last seaon including his 24th place finish at the Rim Rock invitational out of 155 runners and his sectional-qualifying performance in the district meet where he finished 19th out of 72 runners. Utt's best performance also came at districts when he was just a few seconds behind Huffer at 31st place. Senior Jon Steven, juniors Riley Fahrenholtz and Joey Walton, and James Adams will round out the top runners for Park Hill early in the season.

"We have a core group of guys that do things right," Davis said. "We need to have some early success for our kids to gain confidence and know that we can run with anybody in the conference or district. Our keys will be to get our kids to train and race together."

This season, Park Hill has a large freshman group of runners out for the team and Davis is looking for them to step up as well. While it's too early to tell who those runners will be, he's optimistic about the upcoming season.

"Last year we had a lot of young guys on varsity where it was their first time, so we hope they're able to improve and compete even more this year while also adding some guys," Davis said.

In addition to the big Liberty Invitational on September 3rd that kicks off the season each year, Park Hill's biggest and most telling meets will be the Rim Rock Classic and KC Metro meets which are on back to back weekends September 24th and October 1st.