Friday isn’t Emporia State senior Skyler Delmott’s final race at Jones Park, but it might be Delmott’s last chance to break the school record on the course.
Jurmain Mitchell set the record — 24 minutes, 52 seconds — in 1996, and Delmott didn’t mention the record on Wednesday, but he did say his goal was to run below 25 minutes.
Coach Dave Harris said he knows the record is on Delmott’s radar, and he could break it.
“It would be a nice race to just go hard, go all-out,” Harris said. “It’s not tactical, just go hard the whole way and see what kind of time he can run. At the MIAA in three weeks, naturally he’s got to run fast, but there’s got to be a little strategy and he can’t die in the race. But this one, he can go for it.”
That will be the Hornets’ mantra on Friday: Go for it.
Both the Hornet men and women’s one goal is to beat Northwest Missouri, and both need all-out performances to do so.
For the men, they need a fifth runner to catch up to the top four of Delmott, Adam McGovern, Asher Delmott and Will Hohmeier. Ryan Hahn and Andrew Wayman are the top candidates to do so, but they both finished more than 1:20 behind Hohmeier, ESU’s fourth-best runner, on Saturday at Tabor.
“We have four really solid runners, and trying to get a fifth guy to get up with the four has been hard,” Harris said. “We’re trying to do it in training, but I’m not going to hold the top four guys back. It’s a matter of just closing that gap, but it’s pretty large right now.”
After top runner Katie Mona, the women are not as scattered, but they are also not as strong and experienced in their top four as the men. The one meet the Hornets have faced Northwest Missouri, they finished 167 points behind them at the Woody Greeno Invitational.
The ESU women did run that race without Morgan Frehe, who has bounced between the Hornets’ second and fifth spots this year. For the women to make up ground, Harris said they need to fight against a mental block that they often struggle with.
“With them, it’s all about confidence,” he said. “I think if a big crowd comes out there and they’ve got their family and friends out there, they seem to really kind of rise to the occasion with that, and it’s confidence.”
Mona, a sophomore, will try to defend her ESU Invitational title from last season, the only race she won during the cross country season. She had the ninth-best time (18:13) in school history on the course, and she admits she didn’t really know what she was doing as a freshman.
“Last year, I practiced on the course, but now I know it,” she said. “Even the end stretch of the race, I wasn’t really sure how to run it as I was racing it. I’m more prepared this year.”
Harris sat Mona out last weekend to give her a break from competition and make sure she’s ready for the bigger meets coming up.
“Katie races an awful lot during the year,” he said. “She races more than anybody else on the women’s team. I feel the need to occasionally hold her from doing the psychological racing every weekend or every time that we have a race.
“She’s our No. 1 runner. We all know that, and she needs to be up at the front of the race. It was just an opportunity to save a race.”
As for Delmott, there will be no holding back on Friday. He finished second last year after winning the race as a sophomore. The winner last season, Cloud County Community College’s Julius Bohr, set the course record at 23:55.
That’s one record Delmott will not be chasing. As long as other schools don’t bring what Harris calls “a ringer,” Delmott should have a chance to win for the final time at the ESU Invitational and maybe set the school record in the process.
“I feel pretty confident about my abilities,” Delmott said, “but I can’t control what other people run.”