Coaches: Head Coach John Zuelsdorf (26th yr head/4 yrs as asst.), Bill Turgeon (8th yr. asst.), Gary Miller (6th yr. vol.), Justin Lund (6th yr. vol.), Connor Ahrens (1st yr. vol.)
Last year’s records
Boys: W-107 L-23—4th place GNC; 6th place WIAA Sectional
Girls: W-69 L-47—5th place GNC; 8th place WIAA Sectional
Key Losses
Girls: Rylie Swan, Maggee Renn, Kate Krueger to graduation (all varsity-level scoring athletes for multiple years)
Boys: Alex Johnson, Justin Jarvensivu, Cayton Scholz, Lucas Tjugum to graduation (all varsity-level scoring athletes for multiple years)
Key Returnees
Girls: Senior returning letter winners Morgan Waye and Lauren Bauman; with support from underclassmen Arianna Schreiner (jr.), Jackie Wick (jr.), MeaganBerg (so.), Gillian Buckwalter (so.), and Haley Voermans-Dean (so.), all returning letter winners; All-Conference 1st team athlete Haley Voermans-Dean, top performer as a freshman last season.
Boys: Senior letter winners Luke Olson and Parker Johnson with assistance from Kole Svacina. Juniors Evan Ploeckelman and Sam VonSchrader, along with sophomores Keaton Jed, Matt Johnson, and Anthony Ierulli, all returning letter winners.
Key Newcomers
Girls: Autumn Peissig (fr.), competed in middle-level program and looked strong at early season training camp.
Boys: Drew Bolder, undefeated as a middle level competitor last season for TMS. He has a nice compliment of team members with Trey Baalke, Hunter VanRyen, Adam Hall, Hunter Borchardt, Alex Norman, and Garron Albrent.
Coach Zuelsdorff Quotable:
Girls: “With our thin numbers, one goal will be to stay healthy and do our best to be able to enter squads on all levels at each invitational. Like last year we continue to focus on team goals and improving on our team placements at the tournament series. We will continue to work at a lot of cardiovascular base development early season so that the girls can maintain their pace late in races, where we have struggled a bit in recent years. Thus far, we are pleased with how well they are working together as a group. We hope to surprise a few teams that may be over-looking us this year.”
Boys:” As much as ‘pack-style’ running has been a forte of ours in recent years, this year we should have two break away athletes with Bolder and Ploeckelman. They key to our success will be for our #3-#5 runners to minimize the gap, if we can keep that under 90 seconds we will be very competitive when it counts in late October. The days of under a 30 second scoring split, may be gone, however we should have some athletes near the front of many races this season.
“We return solid numbers on the boy’s side, but may lack the overall depth and race experience that characterize our program in recent years. Following our training plan and staying focused will be a critical component in determining our success this year.”
