October 20, 2026
The Cardinal cross country teams have accomplished some extraordinary things over the years. What they did last Wednesday at the West Central Activities Conference meet can be added to that list. All 14 Cardinals—10 boys and four girls—ran personal records at a challenging course with a steep, intimidating hill in Guthrie Center. For the boys, that resulted in a 1st-place finish and five runners landing on the all-conference teams. With only four runners competing due to injuries, the Cardinal girls were not eligible for the team title, but three of them earned all-conference honors.
As a quick review, the WCAC is really good at cross country. Five girls’ teams and four boys’ teams at the meet appeared in the most recent IATC rankings. The conference meet is always a stern and timely test for the Cardinals before the state qualifying and state meets, and they aced this exam. With various injuries and illnesses, the Cardinal boys and girls have had an uneven season, but everything came together at the conference race.
“I think we all just needed to have a good race,” said Dawson Braet. “And we’ve all had good races throughout the season, just not at the same time. But all of us seeing each other doing well, I think that pulled us together to do our best at the same time.”
Bad and mediocre races will happen for individuals and teams. The Cardinals had a few of those this season. But the well-coached and well-trained Earlham teams have a knack for peaking at the right time. That appears to be happening this season—again.
“It’s kind of a mindset for everyone,” said Landon Sheffield. “Everyone knows towards the end of the season that it’s kind of crunch time, so you need to lock it in. It really helped this race because it was so competitive. Everyone was just flying. So just the drive to keep pulling forward with the person in front of you.”
The Cardinal girls were similarly motivated, even though they knew they were not eligible for the team title.
“For me, it was about staying mentally strong because I knew I had the training to PR here,” said Shea Rodgers. “And even with the hill, I knew that I could do that. So it was just staying mentally in it, and when it did start getting hard, knowing that it’s not an option to not run well here. And it was a fun race and there’s very good competition.”
The top five Cardinal boys ran as a pack near the front for most of the race. Nobody was holding back at any time—going fast on the even and downhill parts of the course and steadily chugging up the fierce hill.
Preston Kent of ACGC won the race by 19 seconds. Braet made a bid for 2nd, but fell 4 seconds short of Miles Tromblay of Ogden with a time of 16:44. Andrew Van Zee was 4th in 16:55, David Nichols was 7th in 17:06, Braxton Swain was 9th in 17:06, and Sheffield was 11th in 17:18.
With five Cardinals in the top 11, the team race wasn’t even close. Earlham finished with 34 points, Van Meter had 75, and Madrid had 78.
Devan Smith, Kruz Fagan, Tyler Redmond, Devin Aldrich, and Luke Jensen followed, all with PRs.
Like the Cardinal boys, the girls were also aggressive. The girls’ field was filled with excellent individual runners, and seven of them finished under 20 minutes. Rodgers led the small but mighty Earlham contingent and finished 9th in 20:42. Gracyn Nisley and Sophia Mutchler were not far behind, finishing 12th (21:03) and 14th (21:05), respectively. Senior Lilli Strandberg, who was a critical mid-season addition to help keep the team afloat amid the injuries, finished 54th in 23:46.
Mutchler, a freshman, and Nisley, an 8th grader, have stepped in and made an immediate impact on the team. That’s not easy to do on a team with the reputation and laurels that Earlham has.
“I’ve just been trying to keep pushing and make the team proud,” said Mutchler. “It’s been good. There’s some pressure, but it’s been good having teammates to help.”
Nisley added, “I think it’s just the mindset that I can do it, even though it’s way different than middle school. I just have to believe in myself and I’ll run good.”
The Cardinal girls hope to have at least one more runner compete on Thursday at the state qualifying meet so they can get a team score and hopefully make a return to the state meet next week. Whoever toes the line at the SQM, they’ll be running with confidence.
“I think we’re all ready and I think that we know what we need to do and what’s at stake,” said Rodgers. “I think it’ll be a good race. I think this race helped a lot because knowing that we can get up this hill and still all PR will help a lot for the next course.”
The three senior boys, Braet, Nichols, and Sheffield, look primed to cap their careers with a solid performance.
“I feel like since our freshman year, we’ve all known that we have a big class and we all had potential when we got to our senior year,” said Braet. “And we’ve been looking forward to this moment all throughout our high school career. Now, we are ready to do our best.”
SQM
The Cardinals will travel to Thomas Mitchell Park just south of Mitchellville on Thursday to compete in one of eight state qualifying meets across the state. The top two teams in each SQM qualify for state.
On the boys’ side, the toughest competition for the #8 ranked Cards will be #3 Baxter and #20 BGM. For the #16 Cardinal girls, primary competition will come #4 Collins-Maxwell and #17 North Tama.
Leave a Reply