Seniors Setting Pace for East Jordan Run

August 23, 2019

By Chris Dobrowolski
Special for Second Half

EAST JORDAN — Matt Peterson says he couldn’t have asked for a better group than the one he has this year making up his boys cross country team at East Jordan.

Peterson also couldn’t have asked for more experience than the Red Devils bring into the 2019 season.

East Jordan returns its top five runners from a team that finished third at the Lower Peninsula Division 4 Finals last year, all part of a senior class that has made a major impact for the Red Devils over the past three years.

“Not only are they hard workers and pretty talented runners,” said Peterson, “they’re all just real high-quality kids. They truly lift up everyone around them, not just on our team but in the school. They’re just positive, positive kids, every one of them. I feel super lucky to have them.”

Ethan Nachazel, Aaron Nachazel, Ben Hardy, Alex Schlueter and Caleb Carson are the quintet the Red Devils have leaned on primarily since they entered high school. They led East Jordan to a pair of top-10 finishes in 2017 and 2018 after snapping a 16-year Finals drought for a program that won titles in 1998 and 2000.

The seniors are the best of friends, spending countless hours together at sleepovers or for training runs. Their relationships have forged a bond of cohesiveness between the veteran leaders of the team and the squad in general.

“We’ve all grown up together since kindergarten, and we know each other pretty well,” said Ethan Nachazel. “We keep each other accountable. It’s just nice to know you have all these guys keeping each other together. It’s very important because not only do you work better together and improve quicker, but you also bond way quicker together than you would just by being at practice.”

By all accounts Ethan Nachazel is the Red Devils’ top runner, finishing a team-best 14th overall at last year’s Final and 28th overall to pace East Jordan in 2017. But after that, the pecking order can change from meet to meet and year to year. Hardy, for example, was East Jordan’s fourth counter at the 2017 Final, but improved his time by 1 minute, 14 seconds at last season’s meet to take 15th overall, finishing alongside Ethan Nachazel.

“Ethan has been predominately our first guy, except for one or two meets last year,” said Peterson. “I expect the top five or six to probably move around a bit.”

The Red Devils’ seniors, a collection that has a team-first mindset, have no qualms about who finishes in what order. They’ve set a standard amongst themselves to work toward the ultimate goal — team success.

“It’s fun,” said Nachazel. “We all take the lead during workouts, and we all try to share as much as we can. I think we all contribute just as much. We share the wealth equally.”

“I don’t think it would matter if someone ran well and they were normally the second guy and became the fourth guy because someone knocked them out of their place, but it helped the team,” said Peterson. “They would be OK with that.”

From serious to silly, the Red Devils’ seniors have diverse personalities, but that seems to work toward their advantage in creating good team chemistry, too.

“I think that’s a good mix to have,” said Peterson. “You need to have the serious kids on the team, and you need to have the kids who will provide a little levity and help kids relax once in a while.”

East Jordan’s coach describes Ethan Nachazel as the most serious, while Schlueter brings a humorous side to the equation.

“I think it’s very important to be light-hearted outside of practice and in practice too,” said Schlueter. “Just kind of get everyone’s spirits up. If we were too focused for too long we would just run out of that mental energy at the end of the season, and we don’t want that so I just keep everything light. But when it comes to race day, when we get on that line, it’s just focus.”

The Red Devils have depth outside of their seniors as well. Peterson sees junior Phillip Nemecek and sophomore Caleb Ziebarth as having the capabilities to contribute and perhaps even crack the top five on the team.

Ultimately, the Red Devils are hoping it all leads to another trip to the Finals. There’s no doubting East Jordan is armed with the experience and the ability.

“I think the key for this team, but I could say for any cross country team, is us having a small 1-to-5 gap,” said Peterson. “If we’re fortunate enough to get to the state meet again, I think the team that can pack it up the most and have the smallest gap is going to have the potential to be really successful.”

No matter what happens, though, the Red Devils know the friendships and connections they’ve formed over the years are, and will remain, strong.

“Cross country is one of the best things I’ve ever done,” said Schlueter. “I’ve just met so many people that I love. I’ve fallen in love with these guys. I couldn’t ask for anyone better.”

Chris Dobrowolski has covered northern Lower Peninsula sports since 1999 at the Ogemaw County Herald, Alpena News, Traverse City Record-Eagle and currently as sports editor at the Antrim Kalkaska Review since 2016. He can be reached at [email protected] with story ideas for Manistee, Wexford, Missaukee, Roscommon, Ogemaw, Iosco, Alcona, Oscoda, Crawford, Kalkaska, Grand Traverse, Benzie, Leelanau, Antrim, Otsego, Montmorency, Alpena, Presque Isle, Cheboygan, Charlevoix and Emmet counties.

PHOTO: East Jordan’s Ethan Nachazel leads a pack during Saturday’s Ryan Shay Memorial Invitational. (Photo by Chris Dobrowolski.)

Caro's Albrecht Proves to be Quick Study

By Paul Costanzo
Special for MHSAA.com

August 29, 2017

Before the first cross country race of his life, Yami Albrecht stepped to the starting line without much of a plan.

 

Then a freshman at Caro, Albrecht knew he could run, but didn’t know how to pace himself over the course of a 5K or what type of strategy to employ other than “follow Zak.”

“During the race, I didn’t know what I was doing and thought that maybe cross country wasn’t for me, because I was dead tired in that race,” Albrecht said. “Zak Drews was my teammate at that point, we had trained together all summer and I was always right behind him in the workouts. So that was my expectation, to stay behind him. I did that until after the first mile, then I broke down a little bit.”

Two years, several wins and an MHSAA championship later, everyone is following Yami, and the junior is working to make sure it stays that way.

“Obviously I want to win more, but it pushes me to train harder,” said Albrecht, the reigning Lower Peninsula Division 3 champion. “In my training, I think about how people have a target on me now. I have to train that much harder if I want to be a state champ again. It’s definitely not a guarantee that just because I won last year that I’ll do it again.”

Albrecht’s talent was noticeable long before he ran that first cross country race in the late summer of 2015.

“I knew he was going to be good,” Caro coach Jeff Schember said. “He came over (from Ethiopia) in second grade, and I’m an elementary teacher, so I knew right away when I saw him in second grade that he was something special. I would throw a soccer ball on the field and nobody could catch him to take it away from him.”

Albrecht was born in Ethiopia and adopted at the age of 7. Sports were a way for him to connect to his new classmates.

“When I first came here, my first love was soccer,” he said. “I love sports, and that’s what I did, that’s how I met most of my friends. At recess, we would play basketball and soccer. It just went on from there.”

As a middle schooler, Albrecht ran track, where his mix of speed and endurance translated into plenty of success. In the fall, he wasn’t running on a cross country course, but rather a football field, where he was excelling as a running back.

He decided not to continue with football in high school, however, and cross country was a natural fit.

“It was well established that he was pretty athletic,” Schember said. “But we didn’t know how good he would be because he had never trained. He just came out and tried it, and after our first cross country meet his teammate beat him and he placed (fifth) and he was like, ‘Man, what did I get myself into?’ He’s ultra-competitive, but he’s coachable and he listens.”

Albrecht dazzled his freshman year, even while figuring the sport out. The fifth-place finish in that first meet was tied for his lowest of the season until he went to the Division 3 Final, where he finished eighth, securing an all-state honor.

As a sophomore, Albrecht said, he started to figure out racing even more. He proved it by never finishing worse than fourth and winning the Division 3 title with a personal best time of 15 minutes, 47.4 seconds.

He opened his junior season Aug. 24 by cruising to a victory at the Mike Jackson Memorial Meet at Croswell-Lexington – the same race in which he made his high school debut – in 16:16.4, more than 40 seconds faster than he crossed in the same race a year ago.

That type of improvement, mixed with the success he’s already had, should lead to plenty of opportunities at the college level for Albrecht, who has already had interest from several schools, including University of Nebraska.

“I want to run at the next level, for sure,” he said. “I always thought about it, but I wasn’t sure how big I would make it as a freshman or sophomore, or even now. I for sure want to run in college, though.”

Before he leaves, however, Albrecht wants to bring more than an individual title to Caro, which finished fifth as a team in LPD3 in 2016. 

“It can be a lot more fun winning it as a team,” he said. “It’s not just me having the joy of winning, it’s the whole team, so it’s a lot better that way. In our practice, even when the coaches tell us to go easy, the four juniors, obviously our pace is a little faster. But the freshmen always want to stick with us, and to see that from them is great.”

Keeping up might be difficult, but trying to stick with Albrecht could definitely pay off in the long run for the younger Tigers.

“When you’ve got a kid like that, a special talent like that, it does elevate everyone else around them,” Schember said. “He’s such a team player. He’s won his state title, now he’s focused on getting his teammates a state title. It’s fun when you’re sharing rather than just being an individual. He’s definitely a team player. It’s exciting.”

Paul Costanzo served as a sportswriter at The Port Huron Times Herald from 2006-15, including three years as lead sportswriter, and prior to that as sports editor at the Hillsdale Daily News from 2005-06. He can be reached at [email protected] with story ideas for Genesee, Lapeer, St. Clair, Sanilac, Huron, Tuscola, Saginaw, Bay, Arenac, Midland and Gladwin counties.

PHOTOS: (Top) Caro's Yami Albrecht sets the pace at Thursday's Mike Jackson Memorial Meet at Croswell-Lexington. (Middle) Albrecht is the reigning champion in Lower Peninsula Division 3. (Photos by Mark Rummel.)