Growing Woodland cross country program sends four runners to state meet

When the Woodland cross country program began eight years ago, coach Ryan Layton had about 10 runners join the team.

This season he had 32 runners on the team -- and four of them qualified for the Class 2 state cross country meet Saturday at the Oak Hills Golf Center in Jefferson City, Mo.

"I feel like we're definitely at a high point from what we've been going along so far," Layton said. "Our numbers are up a little bit. We have steadily been increasing our numbers over the last four or five years and we've been steadily getting better over the last four or five years. But this has definitely been our best year in terms of participation and success."

Junior Garret Reynolds qualified as the Class 2 District 1 champion -- the first in school history. Last year as a sophomore Reynolds qualified for state in his first year running cross country with an eighth-place district finish.

He won the district race in 17 minutes, 37 seconds on Saturday -- cutting nearly 40 seconds off his 2012 finish.

"As far as his success this year, it's been great," Layton said. "He was really good last year , too ... so it's not just out of nowhere that he's doing this, but it's great. He won our conference meet, he won our district meet, he learned something over the last month or so that just clicked that took him from a guy that was in the front pack to a guy that was in front of the front pack."

Reynolds said he chose to stop settling with the pace of others and became a "front runner."

He finished 54th at last year's Class 2 state meet in 18:29 and knows this year he has the advantage of knowing how fast he needs to take off and where the toughest hills are.

"I think I can run in the top 25 and work as hard as possible to stay up there so I can place at the state meet," Reynolds said.

The rest of Woodland's state qualifiers are freshmen, which bodes well for the future of the program.

"It feels great now that we're building a successful program," Reynolds said. "We're starting young -- a lot of good runners coming up from our middle school -- and it feels good to be the head of a program that's starting to turn into a successful program after eight years under coach Layton."

Brothers Logan and Landon Thomsen finished 11th and 14th, respectively, to move on to state.

Cheyenne Wells was the only local qualifier in the Class 2 District 1 meet. She finished 15th.

"Well, like you said, three freshmen qualifying for the state meet is extremely exciting, and all of them are hard workers and they're just now learning about cross country, so I think we'll see really exciting things from them as individuals," Layton said. "From a team perspective, our boys team was really close to making it to state this year and we don't graduate any of our top five and only graduate one of our top seven, so I think we should be really good coming back next year as long as everybody stays healthy and keeps working hard."

The top two teams in each district moved on to the state meet. Woodland finished third behind Arcadia Valley and Herculaneum -- just seven points shy of being the second-place team.

"We did graduate some girls, some good girls, some girls who were helping us a lot this year, but we still have a lot of good young girls as well and I think we have some more coming up that'll help us too, so we hope to stay competitive there also," Layton said. "It's going to be nice to have Cheyenne, the freshman that qualified this year. It's going to be nice to have her back as a leader for our team."

Wells welcomes the role of being a leader as a sophomore. She had no prior cross country training when she decided to join the team at the beginning of the school year, and knows that Layton has helped to make her and her teammates successful.

"He knows when to push our limits, but not to push us over the top where we just want to crawl in a hole and die," Wells said. "He knows how to train us."

Layton's cross country knowledge stems from first-hand experience. He ran cross country and track at Perryville High School and competed on scholarship as a distance runner at Southeast Missouri State from 1997 to 1999.

"I lean heavy on that experience really," Layton said. "That and my high school experience, too. That's how I learned how to train distance runners as I was being trained myself, and I learned a lot about race strategy. Those are the very things I use to coach my teams."

Layton also knows it's important to continue to add more runners each year.

"I encourage kids to come out -- a lot of times they don't think they can do it," Layton said. "And I just tell them, 'It's not about what you can do right now, it's about where you can get to through hard work, and we don't know where that is yet. But we never will know unless you come out and try it.'

"It seems to resonate with a lot of kids. They like the idea of coming out and challenging themselves and just trying to see what they are capable of, and a lot of times they find out that they can do a lot more than they thought they could."

State cross country schedule and local participants

Oak Hills Golf Center, Jefferson City

9 a.m. -- Class 2 Boys

Garret Reynolds, Woodland

Greg Hapgood, Saxony Lutheran

Trey Walker, Kelly

Landon Thomsen, Woodland

Logan Thomsen, Woodland

9:35 a.m. -- Class 1 Girls

McKenzie Elam, Oak Ridge

Lexi Wunderlick, Oak Ridge

Jamie Hodge, Delta

Maci Jo Schambug, Oak Ridge

10:15 a.m. -- Class 2 Girls

Cheyenne Wells, Woodland

10:55 a.m. -- Class 1 Boys

Isaac Baer, St. Vincent

John Lipe, St. Vincent

Jake LeGrand, Oak Ridge

Alex Steinberg, Zalma

Jacob Steinber, Zalma

Peyton Ford, Zalma

Chris Bollinger, Meadow Heights

Zach Schumer, St. Vincent

Zackry Moore, Oak Ridge

Josh Wilfong, Meadow Heights

St. Vincent team

Zalma team

11:30 a.m. -- Class 4 Boys

Gabe Underwood, Jackson

Jack Jeffers, Jackson

Noon -- Class 3 Boys

Jacob Meadors, Notre Dame

Brock Kasten, Notre Dame

Rudy McClellan, Notre Dame

12:35 p.m. -- Class 4 Girls

Chelsea Drum, Jackson

Tayler Winick, Jackson

1:05 p.m. -- Class 3 Girls

Adilyn Mueller, Notre Dame

Maddie Baumgart, Notre Dame