The New Richmond Lady Lions return a solid core of talent from the 2014 team that won the Southwest Ohio Division II District Championship.

The New Richmond Lady Lions return a solid core of talent from the 2014 team that won the Southwest Ohio Division II District Championship.
By Chris Chaney
Sports Editor

Sometimes to be great, you have to do things differently than the rest of your competition.

For New Richmond’s cross country teams and head coach Rylan Shebesta that means implementing a unique approach to the early part of the season.

“I have a little bit of a different philosophy than other coaches,” Shebesta said. “We try to work on a base in the summer, but I really try to peak at the end of the year. I don’t necessarily like to build a ton of miles in the summer.”

As is the case at many schools around the area, runners run throughout the year and scholastically speaking that typically means cross country in the fall and track and field in the spring. With that in mind, Shebesta said he likes to give his teams more of a break between the track and cross country seasons and slowly build up the teams’ strength as the weather begins to cool down.

“I’m not a huge encourager of running a bunch throughout the summer,” Shebesta said. “I never expect my times to be that great at the beginning of the year, but I think we’ve had success in the past few years because we haven’t been as good at the beginning, but we’ve been really good at the end of the year.”

Shebesta’s philosophy has proven itself a worthy blueprint with the boys team winning four of the last five Southern Buckeye Conference titles and the girls taking home the crown each of the last three seasons.

With some turnaround on the both sides this season, Shebesta is looking for some returning runners to mesh with the newcomers to create another pair of competitive squads.

“We lost two girls from last year that were in our top seven (Taryn Rupp and Zoe Crabtree), so coming into this year we’re looking for freshman Caitlin Biehle to help a lot.”

Biehle will be a filler piece in the Lady Lions lineup that should compliment Claire Burns, the returning Runner of the Year in the American Division, as well as All-Stars Shelbi Simpson and Grace Hauserman.

Shebesta said that the girls have more numbers out this year, up from the 12 that they finished the season with in 2014.

With the schedule just getting underway, the Lady Lions placed second behind Amelia at the opening-season event at Felicity, the Early Bird Run. Simpson was New Richmond’s top finisher coming in third with Biehle finishing fifth and Burns coming in seventh. Hauserman finished 12th, Sydney Closterman was 25th, Emily Belmont was 27th and Melissa Leffler finished 28th to round out the top seven.

For the boys, the Lions boasted the Runner of the Year as well, but Bobby Bingham graduated out of the program leaving a void to be filled by younger runners.

“What excites me this year is that we have some good younger guys coming out,” Shebesta said. “We have some freshmen and sophomores that, I think, can make our top seven.”

The boys team has strong numbers this season as well, Shebesta said, counting upwards of 23 team members early in the season. Returning standouts include Luke Glenn, Darik Page and Daniel Stoy, All-League performers from a year ago.

That core, along with some new faces, led the Lions to take top honors at the Early Bird. Ryan Wolf was New Richmond’s top finisher coming in fourth place, with Glenn (6th), Austin Planck (17th), Emerson White (22nd), Paul Jaehnen (24th), Tony Cecil (32nd) and Page (33rd) rounding out the top seven.

Other early-season meets include the Western Brown Invitational (held on Tuesday, Sept. 8 and whose results were not available at press time), the Mason Invitational (Sept. 12) and the Bethel Invitational (Sept. 19).

The Lions cross country teams will work to build up their speed and stamina across the months of September and October before the league meet on Oct. 17 at Goshen with the District Meet to be held Oct. 24 at Voice of America Park.