Smock leads L-S harriers at state, earns third medal

FORT DODGE — Greenlee Smock has her running strategy and she doesn’t like to veer too far away from it.

She doesn’t get out fast. She doesn’t like to be a front runner.

Instead, the Lynnville-Sully junior loves to chase down her opponents and for the third straight season, Smock earned a state medal at the Iowa High School State Cross Country Championships on Saturday.

Smock finished 13th out of 150 runners in the Class 1A girls’ 5K race at Lakeside Municipal Golf Course in Fort Dodge with a time of 20 minutes, 9.76 seconds. The top 15 finishers in each race are featured on the clubhouse deck.

“Greenlee has run nearly identical races each year,” Lynnville-Sully cross country coach Darin Arkema said. “She just keeps pushing herself and works her way up into the top 15. She trusts herself and that strategy and while it may nearly give her coaches and fans a heartache, it has worked for her to earn the right to be called all-state for the third season in a row.”

Smock was joined by two male teammates. In the boys’ 1A 5K race, juniors James Gruver and Zach Morningstar were 30th and 89th, respectively. There were 156 boys in the 1A race.

Gruver was competing in his second state meet and he moved up the ladder significantly from last year. His 30th-place time was clocked in a personal-best time of 17:34.75.

Morningstar ran on the state course for the first time in his career and finished in 18:35.88.

“James got out aggressive, putting himself right up near the top 15 by the first mile and at one point all the way up to 11th,” Arkema said. “He couldn’t quite hold that pace but because of that strategy he came across the finish line with a 16-second PR, chopping 42 seconds and 31 places off his finish from a season ago.”

Arkema said Morningstar got swarmed in early in the race but didn’t lose his composure.

“He went from 103rd at the one-mile mark to 90th at the second mile so his strength over the second half of the race showed,” Arkema said.

Smock was 10th as a freshman and 11th last season. She was ranked in the top 15 most of the year before dropping to 22nd in the latest rankings.

Top-ranked Noelle Steines of Calamus-Wheatland won the 1A girls’ race in 18:20.91, while second-ranked Jalyssa Blazek of Turkey Valley was second in 18:36.25.

“I hurt, but it feels good,” Smock said. “I came in here 22nd so I proved them wrong I guess. Three medals in three years is great, and I got one more year left.”

Earlham teammates Jayden Dickson and Dominic Braet went 1-2 in the 1A boys’ 5K race. Second-ranked Dickson won in 16:06.46 and eighth-ranked Braet was the runner-up in 16:18.5.

“It went great. It was way better than the first time,” said Gruver, who ended the season ranked 30th. “I feel like I got better from last year. I tried my hardest and trained my guts out. It feels amazing.”

Morningstar knew the crowd was going to be overwhelming. But it wasn’t what even he expected it to be.

“It was a lot of people. I knew that was the case, but you still don’t know what to expect,” Morningstar said. “There were so many waves of people. I ran as hard as I could. I feel great.”

The Hawks had three state qualifiers for the first time since 2013.

“Just a great day for these three and our program to cap off the season,” Arkema said. “This experience will hopefully not only encourage the three of them but each of their teammates to want more and to give more of themselves between now and next season to be better.”