It’s almost as if Covington Catholic is bored with being in Class 2A.
Will Sheets and Joe Mayer were certainly lobbying to get back up with the big boys.
“Let’s hope we get back to 3A next year,” Sheets said. “That’s the goal. We think we belong in 3A, we think we belong with the big teams. In 2A it’s extremely competitive individually, but the way we’re trending we feel like we deserve to be with the best and the two best teams are in 3A.”
The Colonels cruised to another Class 2A boys KHSAA state cross country title, winning for the second straight year at the Kentucky Horse Park in Georgetown. They won by 18 points with 51 points, Bourbon County the lone team within any sort of striking distance as them with 69 points.
Sheets and Mayer finished second and third, five Colonels finishing in the top 21 in the meet. Sheets ran in a time of 15:42, 20 seconds off three-time reigning state champion Riku Sugie of Thomas Nelson.
“Some days are diamonds and some days are sand,” Sheets said. “Satisfied with the team result, not satisfied with myself.”
Mayer knew what he needed to do and executed the plan, his third place finish coming in a time of 16:01.
“The message coming in was beat everybody else. Will and Riku were going to do their thing, just beat everybody else and I did that,” Mayer said. “I don’t think it was the best I ever executed a race, I think being alone for a while got to my head and let some people come closer than they should have.”
From there it was Colonels’ Luke McLane in eighth at 16:38, Jackson Germann in 19th at 17:13 and Braden Franxman in 21st at 17:16. Jack Salyers was 28th (17:37) and Joel Barczak 39th (17:57) to round out the Colonel runners on the day.
The scary news for everyone else, Sheets is the lone senior out of that bunch. He’ll be attending the University of Virginia to continue his academic and running career next year. He still has some unfinished business come track and field season.
“One of those days. Got to get back to the drawing board for sure,” Sheets said.
This was Covington Catholic’s fourth state cross country title in program history. They’ve won titles in 1982, 1994 and the past two seasons.
For complete 2A boys results, visit here: https://milesplit.live/meets/627923/events/4/results/F/M
For complete 2A girls results, visit here: https://milesplit.live/meets/627923/events/3/results/F/F