The Press-Dispatch
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The Press-Dispatch Fall Sports Preview Wednesday, August 19, 2015 D-9 GIRLS' XC BOYS' XC Chargers in building mode as first-year coach takes reins The Pike Central High School boys' cross country team will begin its season on Thursday, Aug. 20, in the Forest Park Invitational. The members of the team are, front row (l to r): Tommy White, Ty Hickey and Kyle Robling. Second row: Kyle Walter, Jade Johnson, Jacob Bohnert and Lane Ridao. Third row: Head Coach Travis Loveless, Reid Craig, Garrett Manges, Caden Armstrong and Assistant Coach Adam Pfeil. Not pictured: Assistant Coach Beth Bohnert. Ed Ca- hill photo The Pike Central High School girls' cross country team will begin its season on Thursday, Aug. 20, at the Forest Park Invitational. The members of the team are, front row (l to r): Whitney Hartke, Ivy Sullivan Candie Miller, Makaila Mason and Shai Collins. Second row: Lillie Pancake, Marissa Harrison, Abby Hill- yard, Selena Carpenter and Kaitlyn Foster. Third row: Head Coach Travis Loveless, Jordan Montgomery, Cailey Furman, Brittany Young and Assistant Coach Adam Pfeil. Not pictured: Assistant Coach Beth Bohnert. Ed Cahill photo First-year head coach has high expectations for Lady Chargers By Ed Cahill Press-Dispatch Sports Editor sports@pressdispatch.net While the Pike Central High School boys' cross country team lost only one senior – Kaleb Hill – to graduation this past spring, first-year head coach Tra- vis Loveless has just five returning harriers on his 10 -man roster: junior Re- id Craig and sophomores Caden Armstrong, Jacob Bohnert, Garrett Manges and Lane Ridao. Of the remaining five – seniors Ty Hickey, Kyle Ro- bling and Tommy White, and freshmen Jayden Gor- don and Kyle Walter – only Walter has previous cross country experience, run- ning a personal-best 2K time of 11 minutes, 22 sec- onds as an eighth grader. We're young, so the fu- ture looks bright," Love- less said. "We're not real- ly rebuilding. We're kind of building right now, it looks like, with the numbers and the ages." Armstrong, who ran a personal-best time of 18:52 last season, leads the returning Chargers, although Loveless expects Manges, who ran a person- al-best time of 20 :14 last season, to challenge him for the No. 1 spot. "I think they're going to go back and forth," said Loveless, who is being as- sisted by Adam Pfeil and Beth Bohnert. Loveless said that, some- times, it's difficult to be- lieve that both Armstrong and Manges are under- classmen. "They're very mature," Loveless said. "Sometimes you've got to remind boys, 'Hey, we're trying to do something here,' but they work pretty well on their own. Like we did a time trial yesterday, and I didn't have to say to them, 'Hey, let's go faster, let's pick it up.' They just took off." "They understand rac- ing," Loveless added. "They understand running. They understand what I'm expecting from them, and they go and do it, which is nice. You look at those ag- es and you wouldn't ever think they would be like that. But they are, and I think that goes back to fam- ily. Family's been there and family's made sure they've raised them right, kind of steered them in the right direction." Craig, who posted a per- sonal-best time of 20 :29 last season, has a lot of po- tential, according to Love- less. "Honestly, I think Reid has the most potential of all of them," Loveless said. "I told him yesterday, 'If you can just decide that you want to feel terrible for 17 minutes, I think you could be a 17-minute 5K guy.' He's got the build for it. He's very tall, very lanky." "He's got that comfort zone," Loveless added. "And it just takes one time. It takes one race to kind of break out of it." Bohnert, who posted a personal-best time of 21:07 last season, and Ridao, who posted a personal-best time of 21:38 last season, are both running "pretty well," Loveless said. "Lane, he's not short, but he stands next to these guys and he looks like he's about 4-foot-10 because the other guys are so tall," Loveless said. "I could put together a pretty good looking basketball team, I think." Loveless described Wal- ter as a "big strong kid." "I think that he just needs to learn how to race," Love- less said. "Yesterday, we did our 3K time trial. His kick was unbelievable, and we talked about, let's have a little bit less of a kick and put some more energy out there on the course." "Moving from a 3K in middle school up to a 5K in high school, it's 2K, but it's 2,000 meters," Loveless added. "That's a mile-and- a-half, or a little less. We're putting more miles on his legs than he's probably ev- er had in his life. He'll get there. It just might take By Ed Cahill Press-Dispatch Sports Editor sports@pressdispatch.net While the Pike Central High School girls' cross country team lost only two seniors – Alicia Hanselman and Kimberly McCammon – to graduation this past spring, this year's squad will have several new fac- es, including that of their first-year head coach, Tra- vis Loveless. Loveless, a 1994 gradu- ate of Wood Memorial High School who ran cross coun- try at Oakland City Uni- versity, has almost two de- cades of coaching experi- ence, including as an as- sistant cross country coach at Princeton under the tute- lage of Bill Niederhaus. "He's kind of been my mentor," said Loveless, who is in his second year as the Jobs for America's Graduates ( JAG) instruc- tor at Pike Central High School. "I've always gone to him to ask him any ques- tions." This past spring, Love- less served as an assistant coach for the Pike Central High School girls' track and field team, focusing mostly on distance events and high jump. "A lot of these kids ran track for me, so I was able to say, 'Let's go from track right into true cross coun- try running in the summer- time,'" Loveless said. "It's conditioning – conditioning to the heat and the humidi- ty, you know, these beauti- ful southern Indiana sum- mers." "I keep telling them, 'It's only going to get cool- er, and once it gets cooler, then you're going to see your times really drop,'" Loveless added. Six of the Lady Chargers' 13 runners – seniors Shai Collins and Ivy Sullivan, sophomores Cailey Fur- man and Brittany Young, and freshmen Natalie Bohnert and Lillie Pancake – are first-year runners on the high school level. The returners, howev- er, are led by juniors Abby Hillyard – who earned all- conference honors and ad- vanced to semi-state for the second straight year last season – and Kaitlyn Fos- ter, who placed 49th in the regional meet as a fresh- man and 60th as a sopho- more. Also returning are se- niors Makaila Mason and Candie Miller, juniors Sele- na Carpenter – who placed 73rd in the regional meet as a sophomore – and Ma- rissa Harrison, and sopho- more Jordan Montgomery, who placed 81st in the re- gional meet as a freshman. "I think my top six or seven are going to be pret- ty strong," said Loveless, who will be assisted by Adam Pfeil – Pfeil ran for Loveless in middle school at Princeton – and PCHS English instructor Beth Bohnert. "The great thing is we're very young, but I've got a lot of girls who are coming back that are ba- sically veterans who have been through the trench- es and kind of know what cross country is. They're not going to be nervous that first time when they line up and there are 150 See BUILDING on D-11 See HIGH on D-11