On Friday, Oct. 23, NSAA hosted the State Cross Country meet at the Kearney Country Club, bringing various schools to compete for the state title as well as runners competing for their individual records. Although the team itself did not qualify, three runners represented Lincoln Southeast (LSE) in state this year. Carson Lauterbach (11) and Ben Crotteau (12) ran in the Class A Boys’ State Cross Country Meet and Corynne Olson (11) ran in the Class A Girls.

Even with challenges from the COVID-19 pandemic, these LSE runners trained as hard as possible to make it to the last meet of the season. Cross country did not come with a lot of changes due to the pandemic, and that allowed runners to compete at the level they would for a normal year.

All three runners showed impressive results for the 5k race. Lauterbach placed 33rd out of 95 runners and Crotteau placed 67th for the boys meet. Olson placed 77th out of 96 runners for the girls meet with a time of 21:03.7. Lauterbach led LSE with a time of 16:53.7 and Crotteau was close behind with a time of 17:26.5. 

For all three runners, it was their first time running in the state meet. Crotteau described it as being very different from the previous meets he had run in. 

“I was pretty nervous before the race, but once it started, I got through it and it settled down,” said Crotteau. “It was intense all the way through, very high energy.”

Though they did not qualify for the meet, many LSE runners came out to Kearney to cheer on their teammates in the race. “A lot of people came out to support, which is really nice. It felt good when the race started to get hard and there were people to support and help me keep going,” said Crotteau.

Despite some challenges coming from COVID-19, these LSE runners put in the hard work and dedication to qualify for the state meet and obtain exceptional results.