![Rochester’s Lucy Cook, left, and Macomb Dakota’s Jayden Harberts finished sixth and seventh, respectively, at last season’s LPD1 Final at Michigan International Speedway.](/sites/default/files/2022-10/221027_DakotaRochester_2H.jpg)
Rochester's Cook, Dakota's Harberts Finding Fastest Strides at Championship Time
By
Keith Dunlap
Special for MHSAA.com
October 27, 2022
Peaking right before the biggest events is obviously something every athlete wants to do. But executing such a desire is way easier said than done.
Fortunately for cross country runners Jayden Harberts and Lucy Cook – top-10 finishers at last season’s Lower Peninsula Division 1 Final – that hasn’t been an issue.
With Regional meets this weekend and this season’s Finals at Michigan International Speedway the Saturday after that, Harberts and Cook reaching their top form right now might be bad news for other runners around the state.
Harberts, a junior at Macomb Dakota, earlier this month won her third consecutive Macomb County championship in a time of 18:25 at Stony Creek Metropark.
But Dakota coach Tom Zarzycki said that’s not all she’s done.
“She’s run three of her four fastest times within the last month,” Zarzycki said. “She’s definitely on the upswing.”
The same can be said for Cook, a sophomore at Rochester.
Cook won her second-straight Oakland County championship at Kensington Metropark in a time of 18:45.5.
Despite being slowed by an illness earlier in the year, Cook appears to be at full strength at the right time.
“She’s got a tremendous amount of passion and she is 110 percent into everything she is doing,” said Rochester coach Amy Oppat. “She’s easy to coach from that aspect. She’s hard on herself because she cares.”
For Harberts, she hopes to better her seventh-place Finals finish from last year.
She ran a personal record of 17:31 on Oct. 22 at the Macomb Area Conference championships, and she credits enhanced mental strength for her performances this fall.
“For me this year, it’s been a lot of mental growth,” Harberts said. “Last year, I didn’t (personal record) in cross country, so I’ve been waiting a while. I think physically I’ve gotten a lot stronger too. But it’s a lot of mental strength for me.”
Cook, who finished sixth at the LPD1 Final in 2021, followed up her Oakland County title by winning the OAA White championship Oct. 20 in a time of 18:34.1.
The comfort and confidence she gained doing so well at the Final last year has obviously showed this fall, and Oppat said Cook is ahead of where she was at this time last season.
“It was my first big meet,” Cook said of running at MIS in 2021. “I was just going to see how it went and try my best. It was a pretty big personal record.”
Both Harberts and Cook also shined during track season this past spring.
At the LPD1 Track & Field Finals on June 4, Harberts placed third in 3,200 meter run with a time of 10:26.16 and 11th in 1,600 meter run in a time of 4:57.87, while Cook was second in the 3,200 run in a time of 10:23.24.
Cook said distance running is “better for me than sprinting,” while Harberts echoed that sentiment that distance races have long been a better fit for her.
“I like to build my race up,” Harberts said. “It’s not like a sprint where I have to be fast the whole time. It’s more strategic.”
Harberts and Dakota will run Saturday in a Regional at Goodells Park in Wales Township, while Cook and Rochester will run at Hess-Hathaway Park in Waterford.
Given what each has achieved lately, it’s a good bet they’ll still be peaking after the weekend, with all eyes then toward the Finals race.
“I just have to remember to keep running my own race,” Harberts said. “Hopefully I can continue to do that again this year.”
Keith Dunlap has served in Detroit-area sports media for more than two decades, including as a sportswriter at the Oakland Press from 2001-16 primarily covering high school sports but also college and professional teams. His bylines also have appeared in USA Today, the Washington Post, the Detroit Free Press, the Houston Chronicle and the Boston Globe. He served as the administrator for the Oakland Activities Association’s website from 2017-2020. Contact him at [email protected] with story ideas for Oakland, Macomb and Wayne counties.
PHOTOS Rochester’s Lucy Cook, left, and Macomb Dakota’s Jayden Harberts finished sixth and seventh, respectively, at last season’s LPD1 Final at Michigan International Speedway. (Click for more from RunMichigan.com.)
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Freeland Girls Realizing Fast-Pace Potential
By
Paul Costanzo
Special for MHSAA.com
August 14, 2019
Runners on the Freeland girls cross country team had no idea how good they could be a year ago, mainly because most of them were entering their first year in the program.
Two of the Falcons’ newly formed top seven – Kiera and Peyton Hansen – had just moved into the district from Ogemaw Heights. Three others – Whitney Farrell, Allyson Harvey and Mara Longenecker – were freshmen.
“Everyone was kind of new,” said Peyton Hansen, who is now entering her senior year. “My sister and I were new, and there were a lot of incoming freshmen, so it was a blank slate, and that made it easier for us all to get along and work together. That’s what kick-started us to performing very well. You’re not going to want to train and run with people every day if you don’t like them.”
The Falcons got to know each other and got to know their immense talent throughout the season, winning a Regional title and finishing 15th at the MHSAA Lower Peninsula Division 2 Finals. Now six of the top seven are back, and hopes are high for the upcoming season.
“I think it was Regionals, because we weren’t really supposed to win that, but we did and that’s when we realized we could really be good,” sophomore Mara Longenecker said. “Before then, we didn’t really realize it. I think we can definitely go to states again as a team, and hopefully place in the top 10 this year.”
As far as preseason proclamations go, Longenecker’s is fairly mild considering what she and her teammates already have done and what they bring back.
With a tough conference season ahead – Tri-Valley Conference rival Frankenmuth also qualified for the Finals a year ago and could bring back six of its top seven racers – and a region that features Frankenmuth, Corunna and Flint Powers Catholic, nothing is guaranteed. But the numbers are in their favor.
Kiera Hansen was an all-state performer, Saginaw County and Regional champion as a freshman, clocking in with a personal best of 18 minutes, 32.7 seconds. Farrell and Peyton Hansen each were sub-20 runners last year, while Harvey (20:07.9), juniors Caitlyn Mieske (21:10.8) and Longenecker (21:12.7) weren’t far behind.
Of the 14 teams that finished ahead of Freeland at the 2018 Finals, only four (champion East Grand Rapids, Petoskey, St. Johns and Cadillac) are expected to return six of their top seven runners.
Only one other school in the top 15 (Otsego, which placed ninth with two seniors leading the way) had four freshmen in the lineup at the Finals.
“I think that we gained a lot of experience,” Farrell said. “We all didn’t run our best times at that race, but now we know the course and it can be a bit more familiar. There was a ton of people; it was really crazy.”
But modesty is something coach George Drown said runs throughout the team, whether that’s in setting individual goals, team goals or even applying to be one of the team’s captains this season.
“I don’t know if it’s that they don’t want the pressure, so they’re not expressing they know how good they are, but I do think they’re slowly understanding that,” said Drown, who is entering his third season at Freeland. “I think they’re excited for the season and excited for the new challenges we face with a different conference. We go from the team that was the darkhorse in the Regional to the team that has a target on their back.”
While the girls on the team said they didn’t see the success coming prior to last year, Drown did. His wife is the middle school coach in Freeland, giving him extra insight into the upcoming talent. And even though he’s fairly new to Freeland, he spent the previous 10 years coaching in nearby Hemlock.
“I think we did see it coming up,” Drown said. “Did we think they were going to be as good as they were their freshman year? No. But they bought in. We train to make the team good. We did a lot of group runs, and we had times with Kiera and Whitney where we knew they could run faster, but we held them back, and we used our top two girls to elevate our three through six and really pull them through the longer workouts. They bought in, and that’s how we did it. We really focused on the thought the team is only as good as the sum of its parts.”
Drown said his team is capable of stretching well beyond the top seven this season when it comes to being competitive at the varsity level, predicting he has 14 girls who are capable of running a 5K in less than 22 minutes.
So while the hopes are high and the season figures to be competitive, perhaps the modesty at the top of the lineup comes from knowing no breaks can be taken, even in practice.
“It’s really good for me, because I have people to base off of how fast I should be going,” said Longenecker, who joins Mieske as a team captain. “I’m never by myself on a run. I don’t want to say it’s a competition, but it really is at practice. You don’t want to finish last.”
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) Freeland’s Allyson Harvey, right, and Peyton Hansen pace a pack around a bend during a race last season. (Middle) Whitney Farrell, left, and Kiera Hansen also were among Freeland’s top runners in 2018. (Photos courtesy of the Freeland girls cross country program.)