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Marshalltown sending trio to state cross country meet

By Ross Thede 8 min read

Two of the state's top-three finishers from Class 4A went toe-to-toe again, until the finish line came into view anyway.

Marshalltown senior Preston Johnson pulled ahead of Iowa City Liberty's Keegan Decker down the homestretch at Marshalltown Community College to claim Wednesday's 4A District 4 boys cross country title by less than a second, scoring first place and automatic qualification into next weekend's season-ending state meet in Fort Dodge.

Johnson won't be the only Bobcat going.

MHS sophomore Costin Piscitelli took the next step forward in his prep career with a 10th-place finish, earning an at-large berth with his personal-best time of 16 minutes, 24.3 seconds. It was 1:23 faster than his time in the same meet a year ago, when he decided he wanted to run in Fort Dodge, too.

When team workouts started in the summer, Piscitelli told head coach Chad Pietig of his intentions -- and on Wednesday he got it done.

"I've worked really hard for this, it's over a year in the making," Piscitelli said. "There was nothing running through my mind except for the race today."

Bobcat sophomore Grace Whitmore made the same promise to herself at last year's state-qualifying meet, and foot surgery wasn't going to get in her way.

Whitmore opened the season in recovery, but she put the pain behind her to place 19th on Wednesday night to become the first Bobcat girl to advance to state cross country since two-time qualifier Phoebe Hermanson in 2018-19.

Both Piscitelli and Whitmore finished in 40th place in last fall's state-qualifying meet.

"I'm really excited because this has been my goal since last year and I didn't know that it was going to be possible for me," Whitmore said, "but nearing the end of the season I was getting pretty excited because I was looking forward to running this race."

So excited that she ran a full minute faster than a year ago.

Not bad for a girl coming off one foot surgery and awaiting another for a broken toe.

"After the state meet I'll have another surgery, but I'm getting that figured out and I just pushed through," she said.

Both Marshalltown teams finished in sixth place in their respective standings. The Bobcat boys scored 138 points -- 53 positions out of the third place needed to reach state. The MHS girls totaled 172 points -- 105 shy of third position.

Pietig's pre-meet math gave the Bobcat boys an outside shot at qualifying, but Iowa City Liberty (32), Norwalk (82) and Waukee Northwest (85) would not be outdone on this day.

"Sixth place is probably where we should be," Pietig shrugged. "I think maybe we had a few guys who were putting a lot of pressure on themselves who hadn't been in that situation before and they didn't quite run the way that they did last week.

"But if you would have told me in August that we would have even had a chance today, that speaks to how far these guys came this year. They improved so much as a group, it was a lot of fun to watch them improve, and for the most part I was happy with the overall team results."

The opportunity to have the team join him at state again was too much for Johnson to pass up. It was part of the reason he applied his finishing to take down Decker for the first time in their three meetings this season.

"In the back of my mind, I knew that if something absolutely crazy happened and we had the slightest chance to go as a team, I would have felt terrible if we lost by one point," Johnson said, "so I wanted to win. It wasn't going to be the end of the world if Keegan got me in a kick, but if I was there I wanted to go."

Johnson said neither he nor Decker reached out in the days leading up to the state-qualifying meet about running stride-for-stride for nearly the entire 3.1-mile course. They saved the suspense for the end, when Johnson asserted himself with one final ascent in front of them.

"Sometimes we do discuss it, but surprisingly no, we didn't," said Johnson. "Sometimes we do in these kind of situations, but I think we both knew we didn't want to go hammer from the gun. We didn't want to show all our cards today -- next week is what really matters.

"but today it came down to that hill and then leave it to a kick, and I felt really good today, and that's a good confidence booster for next week."

Johnson won Wednesday's race with a time of 15:02.9, while Decker was second in 15:03.6. He was the first of three-straight Liberty runners to reach the finish line.

"Usually I think they formulate their own strategy as far as neither one of them wants to tip their hand for the state meet," Pietig said of Johnson and Decker. "They're only willing to do so much.

"It was a fantastic race and [Johnson] got to test his kick at the end -- I don't think anyone was holding back on that. At some point in time the competitor takes over and they both wanted to win."

Piscitelli wasn't out to take the race by storm, but getting to state was going to take his best performance yet.

He delivered.

"When we started back on June 1st, he said 'I want to be a state qualifier,'" Pietig said. "To put it in football terms, you call a play on June 1st and you have to wait until the middle of October to see if that play worked.

"The hard thing is to be patient. In the middle of the season, he wasn't dropping time, but we were patient. He stuck with the plan and then he had a 25-second drop at the Bobcat Invite. It's just fantastic when you set that goal and you wait that long to see that goal happen."

Piscitelli was the fourth of five at-large qualifiers, just getting edged at the finish line by Norwalk's Brayden Walderbach (16:24.1).

When the Bobcat sophomore turned around upon passing the finish line, he already knew he had made it to state.

"I'm going to be transparent -- I've been thinking about this for like two weeks," he said. "I was awake the entire race -- I was counting the entire race. I know that down the backstretch I was fourth, then I went all the way back to 13th, then I went up to ninth, and then I went to 10th to finsh."

The next runner to reach the finish line -- Fort Dodge senior Cael Hansen -- crossed 11th in 16:28.4 and represented the fifth and final at-large qualifier in the boys race. Cooper Adams of Linn-Mar, who placed 12th, missed out on state in 16:29.3.

"Midway through the race you could tell he had it under control," Pietig said. "There was nobody that was gonna catch him. Nobody was gonna take that spot from him.

"I'm very happy for him that it worked out the way it did."

Michael Downs, a junior, was the next Bobcat to finish, placing 40th in 17:45.8. Thomas Stanley, also a junior, was 43rd in 17:48.3, and senior Elliot Kodis completed the team scoring in 44th (17:51.5).

Connor Faas, a sophomore, was 56th (18:40.0) and Adam Bouhssine, a junior, was 58th in 18:59.1.

"Starting this year, we only had three of the seven that had run under 19 minutes, and today five of them were under 18," Pietig said. "They improved so much."

Bobcat youth movement

Top-ranked Waukee Northwest ran away with the girls title, tallying just 30 points to finish in front of No. 8 Norwalk (59) and No. 10 Linn-Mar (67). No. 19 Iowa City Liberty (116) was well outside of team qualifying, followed by Des Moines Roosevelt (129), Marshalltown (172), Urbandale (186) and Fort Dodge (241).

Fifteen of the first 17 finishers belonged to one of those three qualifying teams, making for a tight race to make it to state as an at-large finisher. Roosevelt's Isabel Spradling secured her spot with a third-place finish (18:20.5), and Liberty's McKenzie VeDepo was 14th in 19:39.4.

Liberty's Mackenzie Maher made it in 18th in 20:49.1, Whitmore was 19th in 20:51.8, and Azalea Van Steenhuyse of Urbandale was 21st in 20:56.4.

MHS freshman Lillian Heil rallied into 25th place with a time of 21:27.4, while classmate Naysa Rottink was 40th in 22:40.3. Mallory Meyeraan, a junior, claimed 43rd in 22:52.9, and sophomore Lily Johnson rounded out the team scoring in 48th (24:06.6).

Eiley Chamberlin, a freshman, was 50th (24:47.2), and senior Elise Brott was 51st (24:49.7).

"A lot of our team is young and we'll just all keep working together throughout our years," Whitmore said. "As more new girls come, they'll see our bond together and be excited about running."

The Class 4A portion of the state cross country championships is Saturday, Oct. 31, with the girls race at 2 p.m. and the boys race at 2:45 p.m. at Lakeside Municipal Golf Course near Fort Dodge.

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