By David Paulsen
Corrrespondent
Two East Troy High School cross country runners are headed to the WIAA State Cross Country Championships Saturday, Oct. 27.
Senior Jessica Drout and sophomore Brody Kazik both qualified as individuals at the Whitewater Sectional held at UW-Whitewater Friday.
In each sectional, the top two teams, plus the top five individuals from non-qualifying teams, qualify for state. With the East Troy girls finishing eighth and the boys 10th, the Trojans could only hope to qualify individual runners to state.
Jessica Drout qualified for the second year in a row by virtue of finishing as the fourth fastest runner on a non-qualifying team. She completed the 4,000-meter girls course in 16 minutes 4.6 seconds, which was fifth overall.
Head coach Matt Heer said he did not know what to expect from Drout since she had been injured so much of this season.
“The fact that she missed so much training, I didn’t know if that would affect her,” he said. “Our main goal was to keep her healthy for this
race.”
Heer noted that at the one-mile mark, Drout was someplace between 25th and 30th place. From that point on, she began to move up.
“She’s such a good racer,” Heer said. “She can make changes mid race.”
Drout finished just 13 seconds behind the first-place finisher.
“It was a really phenomenal showing,” Heer said.
Heer added that according to his records, which cover the past 20 years, Drout is only the fourth Trojan girl to qualify for state more than once.
“That’s a big accomplishment,” he added.
Due to being at state last year, and learning a lot from that experience, Heer believes Drout “will do a lot better at the state meet” this year. He noted she will need to get out quicker than she did last year.
Kazik is only the second Trojan boy in the last 20 years to make it to state individually as a sophomore. His qualifying for state came as a surprise to Heer, who did not expect him to qualify.
Heer noted that Kazik went out fast and at the halfway point was about 12th place. He was still in that position with about 1,000 meters to go in the 5,000-meter boys race when he began to pick off one runner after another.
Kazik ended up seventh overall, but was the fourth fastest individual qualifier, with a time of 18:00.3. Whitewater’s Brett Harms ran away with the boys race, winning it in 16:43.6.
Heer said Kazik told him he heard a spectator refer to runners in front of him as going to state and it gave him the incentive to put on a kick at the end of the race that was good enough to qualify.
“It was really impressive,” Heer said.
The state championships will be held Saturday, Oct. 27, at The Ridges Golf Course in Wisconsin Rapids. The Division 2 boys race begins at 11:40 a.m., with the Division 2 girls race beginning at 1:40 p.m.
The Trojan girls team finished eighth overall, which was not as good as Heer had hoped for. He noted that the girls seemed to have put their heart and soul into the Rock Valley Conference Meet a week earlier, because most of the girls times were considerably slower than the previous week.
The two girls squads that qualified for state were Pewaukee and Lakeside Lutheran.
The boys 10th-place finish was about where Heer expected them to finish.
Jefferson and Beloit Turner were the two boys squads who qualified for state.
