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The goals are simple, yet lofty, for the Lake boys cross country team.
Win the Northern Buckeye Conference (NBC) Championship, the district championship and qualify for the state meet by finishing in the top-four at the regional meet in Tiffin.
The Flyers are led by senior Nathan Adkins, one of the area’s best runners. Sophomore Scott Brittenham has established himself as the team’s second runner, followed by a close quartet which includes Riley Breese, Tyler Rickman, Orfrancis Ozuna and Nathan Scanlan.
The Lake cross country team finished second at last year’s SLL Championships, their highest finish in school history. The Flyers lost to Elmwood, who was the was top team in the SLL for the past three years and is the favorite to win the newly-formed NBC.
The NBC, of which the Flyers and Royals are currently a part of, contains another four teams who were a part of the SLL (Genoa, Eastwood, Otsego, Woodmore), as well as Rossford and Fostoria. So far this season, the times of both Lake and Elmwood’s top-five runners have been comparable, which should make for an exciting NBC Championship Meet on Oct. 15.
The team is coached by Ken Mysinger, who is excited about the potential the team possesses.
Mysinger teaches World History at the seventh-grade level at Lake Middle School, his fourth year doing so. For three years before that, he taught Language Arts to eighth graders. Previously, he has worked for 16 years for the U.S. Postal Service and served in the military for 15 years before that.
The team’s most recent competition, which came on Oct. 1 at the Clay Eagle Invite at Pearson Park, saw the Flyers do quite well, finishing second out of 22 teams.
The team has the capability of having a runner in the mid-16:00s (Adkins), one in the high-16:00s (Brittenham) and four in the mid-to-high 17:00s (Breese, Rickman, Ozuna, Scanlan), giving it the opportunity, should they run the perfect race, to make it to Columbus.
At last season’s district meet in Bettsville, Lake finished in second place and had three runners (Adkins, Brittenham, Breese) finish in the top-16 individually. In the regional meet, however, the team finished 12th out of 16 teams, a result with which they were unsatisfied.
They are looking to make up for that in 2011.
If the Flyers are going to finally get over the hump and win the league championship and qualify for state, now is the time. Three of Lake’s top runners are seniors, so this may be their best chance to compete for a conference championship and make a deep run in the postseason for a little while.
As for Adkins, he wants to qualify for state as an individual and is hopeful that the team can do the same.
When Adkins, who has two younger brothers, got to high school, he didn’t even compete in cross country; he played football his freshman year, and, while it did not work out, he notes that he was good at the conditioning portion and that one of the coaches advised him to consider running cross country.
He is also an elite athlete when it comes to track and field. Last season, he was the Suburban Lakes League (SLL) champion in the 1600 and the 3200 meters and was second in the 800. At the district meet, he finished third in the 1600, good enough to qualify for regionals.
Adkins has spoken with several colleges in Ohio, including the University of Toledo, about running cross country at the next level.
Last season, the final qualifying time in the Division II Regional Meet in Tiffin was 16:41. That’s the mark Adkins has to shoot for, if not a little higher. His personal record (p.r.), which he ran earlier in the season, is 16:39, so he’s certainly got a shot of finishing in the top-16 and making it to Columbus.
Ultimately, the key for the team, and for Adkins, is peaking at the proper time. Should they do so in the next few weeks, they’ve got a legitimate shot at achieving most, if not all of their goals.
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