SHERIDAN — Two years ago, Art Baures stood up on a hillside and watched his Sheridan cross-country boys warm up before their state championship race.
The boys chatted and laughed, not showing any stress or pressure. Baures hadn’t heaped any onto them, but he thought they were noticeably loose. He turned to his assistant, Isaac VanDyke.
“We’re either going to win or get crushed,” Baures told VanDyke.
He was right.
The boys brought home the 4A state championship, and Baures attributed it to their relaxed attitude. Wednesday, he saw the same thing in this year’s Sheridan cross-country team. Both the Broncs and the Lady Broncs appeared carefree at practice.
“I have a confidence for these guys, and I believe in them as athletes,” Baures said. “So for me, I’m always the optimist. I really believe they’re going to do everything they can possibly do ... I think there is a genuine belief that we’ve had a good season. We’ve run all these good races. Now, we’re just going to do that one more time.”
The team leaves town Friday and travels to Ethete. The Broncs and Lady Broncs will compete in the state championship meet Saturday. Only the top seven boys and the top seven girls — with one alternate on each side — from each school go.
“It sort of feels like the prize at the end of a game or something,” senior Sarah Gonda said. “It feels like the end goal. That’s exciting.”
“We’re just trying to have fun,” senior Reese Charest said. “That’s the most important thing. We’re not worried about winning. As long as we have fun, we’ll be fine.”
Baures’ confidence comes from a couple areas.
First, he’s seen what his team can do when it runs with its easy attitude. The first time he saw it was last month in Rapid City, South Dakota, where his boys won the event and his girls placed second out of 16 teams.
“(They) just ran out of their gourd,” Baures said. “It was like this a-ha moment … They were like, ‘We just ran in a really big meet. We were loose. We were excited. We were enthusiastic, and we ran really well. If we use that as a blueprint, we could be pretty good.’”
Baures tested them a week later.
He upped their training intensity before their farthest-away meet in Thornton, Colorado. He knew they were sore but wanted to see how they would respond.
The Broncs and the Lady Broncs passed the assessment, finishing fourth out of more than 25 teams.
“When times get tough in a race, you fall back on your training,” Baures said. “When it’s really hard, you use those experiences in practice. It’s fun and it’s easy to win when you’re running and feeling great. But when you’re tired and it’s tough and you persevere and you still perform well, that’s a test, to me, that separates teams.”
Both the boys and girls have sliced the times between their first and fifth finishers, which has been a season-long goal.
“We’ve put in the work,” Gonda said. “This isn’t the week where we are putting in all the effort to go win state. It’s been the past nine weeks. We’re just going to go do what we’ve been doing all season and let that work pay off.”
Plus, they’ve already seen the state course. They ran in a meet there Sept. 11.
The first mile is uphill. The second descends back down. The final mile features what Baures and other Wyoming coaches nicknamed “the Bermuda Rectangle.” It’s a flat, open field where it feels like runners aren’t making much progress because they’re looking at the same scenery the entire time.
“You have to be really mentally strong in that last mile,” junior Austin Akers said. “It can be hard to motivate. We just try and think of our teammates and the work we’ve put in to kind of motivate ourselves back there.”
So after a nine-week season, all the team bonding and mental and physical training, they’ll tackle the Bermuda Rectangle.
“I’m ready,” junior Ella Kessner said. “I’m excited.”
It all leads to that final mile. That’s the reward.
Or depending on how it goes, the prize could be a state championship trophy.
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