One thing that every cross country team seeks is progress whether its from meet to meet or year to year. In 2016 the ADM Tiger cross country program saw quite a lot of progress from many runners, most notably from sophomore standout Sadie Juergens.

After starting off the season on a rather slow note, finishing 27th in a tough field at the Urbandale Invitation and finishing 30th at the Ballard Invitational, Juergens stepped up her game from then on out. Juergens earned an 8th place finish at the Winterset Invitational, a 2nd place finish at the home Tiger Invitational, and an 8th place finish in the Leon Fox invitational in Perry. Juergens showcased her improvement the most during the Raccoon River Conference meet where she took 5th overall and the state qualifying meet where she took the 4th spot.

Juergens improved her times each meet starting with her first meet time of 22:29 to her state meet time of 20:19. She ended the season with four consecutive meet finishes inside 20 minutes.

Juergens showed a great amount of growth and progression as noted by head coach David Zwank, but as coach Zwank also told Raccoon Valley Radio, Juergens is cabable of even more in the future.

“The growth that she finished with, kinda where we expected her to be. She’s capable of even more and I’m sure that’s something she believes in as well. Gotta keep understanding that this process takes time and you can’t short cut most of it. I think part of that is just getting through that experience and understanding first what it takes to get there and then work on that from then on,” explained coach Zwank.

Including her state meet time, Juergens averaged 21:21.75 per race this season. Her collective time total across all 8 meets equated to 2 hours, 50 minutes, and 54 seconds.