The Hubs cross country team relied heavily on its underclassmen last season, with only one senior and zero juniors on the 2017 roster. However, many of those underclassmen are upperclassmen this year, and head coach John Dobbs will be looking for his young runners to step up at the varsity level.
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ROCHELLE — The Hubs cross country team relied heavily on its underclassmen last season, with only one senior and zero juniors on the 2017 roster. However, many of those underclassmen are upperclassmen this year, and head coach John Dobbs will be looking for his young runners to step up at the varsity level.
There may not have been many varsity races for the Hubs last year, but the Rochelle boys still managed to record some top placements at the fresh-soph level including a runner-up finish in the Freeport Invitational. Rochelle opens the 2018 season on Tuesday, Aug. 28 at the Afton Forest Preserve for the Sycamore Invitational.
“We have some returning guys who will be helping us out,” Dobbs said. “We’d like to build our roster up to have 10-to-15 guys and our short-term goal is to get our roster up… We can’t go down anymore so our boys will have to be ready to compete at the varsity level. Hopefully some of our younger guys can follow their lead.”
Headlining Rochelle’s returning runners are juniors Evan Horner, Tucker Louis and Santiago Cordoba, who finished as the team’s fastest competitor in 2017. While the three upperclassmen will create a solid base for the team, Dobbs said there may be some struggles this fall until the Hubs can increase their numbers to build a core group moving forward.
“I think we may struggled until we develop a core group of about 5-to-10 boys who I would call distance runners,” Dobbs said. “It could be a while.”
Regardless of roster size or expectations, Dobbs said the goal for his runners is to always progress and grow stronger as the season progresses. The Hubs haven’t sent any runners to the sectional level since 2016, when four boys (Spencer DiSimoni, Austin Walsh, Matthew Drendel and Lance Huftalin) all advanced.
“We always stress personal bests and finding ways to improve,” Dobbs said. “We really think that, if the group buys into our training system, they’re going to be successful. Our hope is that our guys really get after it within our system and that they get the most out of it.”
