BRODHEAD — In the first home race of the spring cross country season, the Cardinals hosted four other teams on a beautiful, sunny afternoon at the former Decatur Lakes Golf Course, which closed in 2019.

“It was great — our first meet was two Tuesdays ago and it was cold and pouring rain. But even then, to be able to compete again was huge for them,” said Curt Gratz, Brodhead-Juda coach. “This was our first race on this course, and I loved being out here. It’s very pretty and it feels like a cross country course.”

The Cardinals have typically held their races on school grounds, but with an opportunity to utilize the former golf course, the team eagerly obliged.

“We’re very excited and owe big Thank-Yous to the Riemers for letting us use their land to host this,” Gratz said.

Senior Mady McIntyre, one of school’s most prolific long-distance runners, helped design the running route around the former Back 9. 

“It gives us some hills, and I love that it’s just one loop. I honestly love hills more than a flat course — I feel like it pushes you more to push yourself up the hill,” McIntyre said. “I helped make this course, so I knew the spots that I wanted to surge. I wanted to get good time in the 19s, and I did that, which felt good.”

The racing course opens with a sharp hill climb, then settles into a long downhill path. The course then zigs and zags around old fairways, greens and behind backyards, then loops around the southeast edge of the property in a straightaway past taller grass and a tall row of a trees. Over the final 600 meters, runners face another hill climb, followed by a gradual slope to allow for an exciting downhill sprint finish.

“If you know Mady, you know she’s an incredibly hard worker, so she was looking for ways to make this as challenging as she could make it — which I love,” Gratz said. “It’s not like it’s overly challenging, but it’s a good, solid cross country course. We wanted to make sure we incorporated some good hills. At the school, it’s just flat there and there’s not much that we can do for terrain. Here we have some terrain changes we can do.”

McIntyre (19:22) won the girls race with ease, finishing more than two minutes ahead of the next closest competitor (Samantha Herrling, Wisconsin Heights, 21:50).

“Mady ran great and set the record holder the first time running,” Gratz said, laughing. “She would have set it if it was the 10th time running, because she is a fantastic athlete.”

McIntyre said she trained hard in the offseason, and during the initial months of shutdowns related to the COVID-19 pandemic. Just being able to get out and race again meant the world to her, and she was all smiles when the race was over.

“My dad’s been helping me make workouts, along with the coaches. I didn’t do basketball this year just to give myself more time to train. I did lots of intervals and got lots of miles in. I did everything I would normally do in an offseason. Until the snow came, I was able to go outside a lot. It was a good offseason,” McIntyre said. Now that the sixth-month delay is over, McIntyre is happy to be back out and running against other competition. “It feels great just to be running again.”

New Glarus runners Lily Maynard (22:15) and Dayna Karls (22:34) finished third and fourth, with Melanie Fink (22:52), Tenley Faber (23:37), Annika Ziperski (23:39) and Emma Martinson (23:41) taking sixth through ninth overall. 

Brodhead’s Kalena Tiemer was 12th overall at 24:49, followed by Kyleigh Raupp (18th, 28:07), Lexie Lobeck (27th, 31:45) and Hannah Withrow (32nd, 34:34). Four Cardinals did not finish the race, nor did two from Jefferson, two from Beloit Turner, two from New Glarus and one of the Wisconsin Heights runners.

“We had some injury and heat related issues today; we had a couple of girls that didn’t finish the race,” Gratz said. “But we had some girls that are normally JV stepped up and were able to finish. My whole girls squad ran well I thought, and we’re out here again next week, so we’ll see if we can run it better. So me as a coach, that’s all I care about — from week to week, season to season, are my athletes getting better?”

In the boys race, returning state-qualifying squad New Glarus-Monticello dominated the field, with its top five runners all finishing in the top six of the race, and 10 runners finishing in the top 21. In fact, the first Knights to cross the finish line all did so in under 20 minutes. Evan Guenther (17:38) was the first to cross the finish line for the Knights, followed by Tom Nelson (17:47). Jefferson’s Mason Marin (17:55) was third, followed by a trio of NGM runners, Brayden Ryan (18:04), Braylon Hoesly (18:11) and Joe Quaglia (18:22). Ty Ready (18:58) was ninth overall, Conor McCoy 12th (19:31) and Linden Lounsbury (19:47) 14th. 

“In my opinion, they (the NGM boys lineup) do things right. For instance, taking a long warmup is counterintuitive, and everybody else on other teams are doing 50 meters, and in another couple of weeks we’ll be doing a half mile because it’s the right thing to do,” NGM coach Steve Wehrley said. “They dressing light when walking the course (beforehand), they are following the map and checking things out beforehand and discussing it. It makes me as a coach proud even though I am not doing anything but witnessing some really good kids.”

Brodhead’s Kyle Braund (18:54) finished eighth overall, with teammates Jacob Lomar (15th, 19:54), Gavin Pinnow (18th, 20:26.4), Josiah Engen (22nd, 20:41) and Brady Bruns (35th, 23:08) rounding out the scoring.

“Our pack was tight today. We’re actually missing two guys out sick today, too, so we only had six, but that pack was nice and tight and that’s going to help us going forward,” Gratz said. “Kyle ran a great race out front for us, and that’s going to be his PR time. Gavin and Josiah ran good. There are quality teams out here today, four different state-qualifying teams on the course. I love racing that kind of competition rather than blowing the doors off of everybody. 

Wehrley said his squad has adapted well to the shortened season, with perhaps the biggest difference being the loss of a summer of running followed immediately by the normal fall practice and meet schedule.

“We lose two weeks (of the season), but what a lot of people don’t realize is that we are usually coming off of a summer of running, and so with a longer season you don’t get quite so many injuries. We had a kid or so after the first mile on the first day of practice saying ‘Ooo, aah; this hurts; that hurts’,” Wehrley said.

Like coaches across all sports, Wehrley is aware of his team’s risk for catching COVID-19 and potentially shutting down for a bit — a painful reality for an already shortened season. Even still, he sees the positives that come with the territory.

“It’s such a privilege (to run), because we didn’t know if we’d even have a season. Every single day you don’t know if they are going to let you come back. For the average person, that’s going to seem like rhetoric, but in this position if you get a call that ‘so-and-so has the sniffles and a fever,’ which happened to us at the end of last week. Now they are in quarantine, but if they test positive then the whole team is in quarantine,” Wehrley said. “So far, it’s been negative (results), and I’ve never been so happy to have kids fail tests.”

The WIAA plans to host a sectional and state culminating event in the opening weeks of May, right as track and field season is getting underway. Brodhead-Juda, NGM and Monroe are all paired together in Sectional 3, with location yet to be determined. 

“When you’re doing something you really like and everything is going well, it’s over before you know it, but when you are getting a root canal it seems to take a really long time. We have a group of kids here that is having an almost ‘instant season’, because everyone is really enjoying every element of it,” Wehrley said.