This could be the year for Lincoln North Star.
The cross country program at North Star has been one of the best in the city, almost from the start when it opened 22 years ago, both for team success and a combined seven individual state championships — four for Jeralyn Poe and three by Liem Chot.
A team state championship is the one thing missing, and if the North Star boys team can avoid injury, they’re a strong contender to win the Class A title next month.
The Navigators have won all four team titles at meets this season by winning their home North Star Invite on Thursday at Pioneers Park.
The Gators are crushing even the second-place teams. It won the Seward meet by a 12-57 margin over second place; it won the Yankton, South Dakota, meet by a 66-130 margin over second place, including a 2-3-4 finish by its top runners; it won the Norfolk meet by a 28-97 margin over second place.
Then on Thursday, the Gators won by a 28-73 margin over runner-up Lincoln Southwest. The Gators had a 1-2-4-9-12 finish.
“Our top three runners are huge for us,” North Star coach Brian Wandzilak said. “We’re putting three runners in the top five, and you’re leaving with your first three runners scoring single-digit points.”
North Star senior Josiah Bitker was the individual champion on Thursday. He opened up an early lead, and then held off a late kick from two runners at the finish to win the 5,000-meter race in 15 minutes, 58 seconds.
North Star junior J’Shawn Afuh finished second in 16:01, and Norfolk’s Liam Gonzalez was third in 16:05.
The Gators’ other runners for the team score were Tyler Smith (fourth), Franky Turek (ninth) and Titus Bitker (12th).
North Star finished as state runner-up last year, 15 points behind Fremont.
“We have some expectations coming into the season after last year having a close call at state,” Wandzilak said.
The Gators are ranked No. 1 in the coaches’ poll. Lincoln East is No. 2 and Creighton Prep is third. North Star and Lincoln East face off next week, while North Star and Creighton Prep won’t race each other until the state meet.
North Star is well on the way to having the type of season many people thought it could.
“We knew coming in, only losing one senior from last year’s top seven, that if we could get a healthy spring, a healthy summer and keep them healthy in the fall, that we were going to have a very strong team,” Wandzilak said. “And it’s proven to be better than I maybe thought we were going to be.”
In the girls race, Bellevue West senior Tatum Neilson won by 38 seconds in 18:56 for her fourth win of the season. Anna Perdue of York finished second.
Omaha Marian won the team title 52-66 over Lincoln Southwest.
For the first time, this meet also has a champion for the combined results of the boys and girls races, with Southwest winning the award. Each Southwest team finished second.
There’s a traveling trophy for the combined title that includes a map of the race course. In cross country, the boys and girls teams usually spend a lot of time training together and have the same coaches.
North Star got the idea of a combined award from the Seward meet.
“As much as any other sport, this is a team thing, and I think it’s really neat to acknowledge that aspect of it and make it public,” Wandzilak said.
Cross country is a popular sport at Southwest with 115 combined athletes this year, and that often leads to strong teams for both boys and girls.
Meredith Marsh finished third to lead the Southwest girls, and Cole Cover led the Southwest boys with an eighth-place finish.
“It just adds to how we felt about the day, which was that the kids ran hard,” Southwest coach Ryan Salem said. “They trusted us so much when we gave them a race plan to be smart because the sun was coming out, and Pioneers Park is so hard, especially in the second half of the race. And then we just watched the kids follow their instructions, and it was amazing. The combined award just shows the strength and depth of our program.”
Reach Brent C. Wagner at bwagner@journalstar.com or 402-473-7435.
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Brent Wagner
Husker volleyball/women’s basketball reporter
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