The Hubs cross country team will field one of its youngest rosters in recent years this season, and head coach John Dobbs will be counting on his underclassmen to show leadership when Rochelle takes the field for its first meet of the 2017-18 school year.
This item is available in full to subscribers.
To continue reading, you will need to either log in to your subscriber account, or purchase a new subscription.
If you are a current print subscriber, you can set up a free website account and connect your subscription to it by clicking here.
If you are a digital subscriber with an active, online-only subscription then you already have an account here. Just reset your password if you've not yet logged in to your account on this new site.
Otherwise, click here to view your options for subscribing.
Please log in to continue |
ROCHELLE — The Hubs cross country team will field one of its youngest rosters in recent years this season, and head coach John Dobbs will be counting on his underclassmen to show leadership when Rochelle takes the field for its first meet of the 2017-18 school year.
Seven runners graduated from the 2016 squad including sectional qualifiers Spencer DiSimoni, Lance Huftalin and Matthew Drendel. Rochelle will also be without junior track and field standout Austin Walsh, who Dobbs said is still recovering from an injury.
“The biggest thing for the boys is they’ll have to grow up mentally very fast,” Dobbs said. “They have to understand that, every time they toe the line for a race, they can’t put themselves into a box and think that they aren’t good enough. They have to race on the edge every single day.”
While the Hubs are losing a chunk of their core, there are a handful of sophomores returning from 2016 including Diego Escobar, who finished last year’s campaign as one of Rochelle’s top runners at the freshman-sophomore level. Ben Hickey, Santi Cordoba, Tucker Louis and Uzziel Zarate are also expected to make a significant jump this season.
“Last year was a really good year for me and I’m really excited to be back,” Escobar said. “We’re looking to try harder in practice than we did last year and we’re looking to put in more effort overall. We’re a smaller team this year but I think we’ll do well.”
“It’s very competitive at the high school level,” Hickey added. “There are a lot of good runners… It’s just us sophomores so hopefully we’ll do well this year. It’ll take lots of practice.”
The Hubs will travel to Sycamore on Tuesday, Aug. 29 for their first meet of the season before heading to Oregon on Saturday, Sept. 2. The 2017 Rochelle Invitational at Skare Park with Amboy, Clinton, DeKalb, Sandwich and Somonauk is scheduled for Thursday, Sept. 14 at 4:30 p.m.
Rochelle’s roster may be young, but Dobbs said he sees plenty of potential in his returning runners. While future success isn’t out of the question, the Hubs will have to mature in a hurry if they seek to be competitive this fall.
“When we ran those guys down at the freshman-sophomore level last year they had some success,” Dobbs said. “They finished high in a few meets… They understand they can be good, but it doesn’t just happen. They have to work really hard in practice and I think the biggest part right now is finding the leadership in that group.”
