Stallworth speaks at first KCAC media day; Bethel men, women cross country picked 10th
Stallworth speaks at first KCAC media day; Bethel men, women cross country picked 10th
Bartel and Bertholf lead the returners as new additions are welcomed.
On Wednesday at 11:30 a.m. the KCAC held its 2023 cross country media day with coaches from each school speaking about their aspirations for the quickly approaching season. This includes first-year Bethel head coach Aaron Stallworth.
Stallworth opted to begin practices early this year, starting on Aug. 5. The runners on both the men’s and women’s sides have trained all summer with different workouts ranging from short-term hill sprints to 80 miles per week.
“On the [women’s] side, our returners Elly Bertholf and Bethany Schrag had really great summers and so far they were looking good in practice, so I’m really excited to see how they improve this season,” Stallworth said.
“Our incoming freshmen, Emma Graber and Taryn Paulino, are from Colorado and Kansas,” he added. I'm pretty excited to see how they’ll do in the first week of September at the first race of the season and we'll go from there.”
The Thresher women will seek to improve on their finish last year by pushing together with strong performances from the freshmen and stronger performances from the returners. The men’s team is quite the opposite, having mostly returners looking for national qualifying times this fall.
“Two of our top finishers are back, Luke Schmidt and Isaiah Bartel,” Stallworth said enthusiastically. “Bartel actually went to nationals in the [800-meter] last year, so I would say he’s hungry.
“I think Tobin Wise is going to have a really big year. He put in a lot of work this summer, and looks a lot different from last year. He is in amazing, phenomenal shape and he’s going to have a breakout year. From all that, and the rest of the returners, we’ll go from there.”
Bethel was picked to finish 10th in the conference in both the men’s and women’s coaches’ polls. The opening race will be the Terry Masterson Classic on Sep. 1.