By Rick Cassano

HARRISON – Running ability and self-motivation are present within Harrison High School’s cross country program, an indication that 2026 could be a very good season.

The Wildcats opened the campaign at Centerville’s Saturday Night Lights event last weekend as the girls took fourth place in the varsity gold race and the boys finished seventh in the varsity black competition.

“Overall, it was pretty solid,” third-year Harrison coach Steve Barnes said. “This is a nice group, a fun group. We’re not spending a lot of extra time trying to mold them and get them to do what we want them to do. Most of the time they’re just working hard and doing what they’re supposed to do.

“We can only do so much as coaches. We can talk about goals and how to do certain things, but if they don’t want to do it, there’s no magic formula. This group has that internal motivation. We’re excited. I’m really looking forward to seeing where we are four weeks from now and at the end of the season. We have a lot of room for improvement.”

Leading the Wildcats at Centerville were senior Hayden Rogers and freshman Chloe Butler. Rogers was fifth among the boys individuals with a 5K time of 17:43.39, his career-best performance by nearly 40 seconds. Butler was 20th (20:53.6) in her varsity girls debut.

“I want to be running in November,” Rogers said. “For me, running is just a great space to clear my mind and use my body. It’s a great way to worship the Lord, which is something I believe in, and it’s also healthy for me to do. It gets me physically active. I don’t like sitting around. I want to do something.”

Butler is a soccer player who started running track in seventh grade and added cross country to her plate last year. She was an immediate success.

“I did pretty well during seventh-grade track season and a couple of my friends did cross country, so I thought I’d try it,” Butler said. “Soccer is my main sport and staying fit is a big thing for me, and I really like running. It’s fun. Hopefully I’m going to be PR’ing almost every race.”

Barnes, a 1986 Harrison graduate and former Wildcat runner, said he stresses the mental side of running and maintaining focus.

“You only focus on one thing at a time,” Barnes said. “It’s kind of like keeping that pedal down in your car when you’re driving. As soon as you let up, you slow down. As soon as you lose your focus, you slow down. We talk about different strategies, and sometimes it’s how to be tough.

“Cross country is hard. It hurts. So when you’re training, when you’re racing, part of it is just staying focused and telling yourself you can push through that pain. Some people think you just run hard. Sometimes you’ve got to figure out mentally how to push your body. We don’t want to let anybody beat us that hasn’t earned it.”

Harrison’s top five boys at Centerville included senior Mason Barnes (13th, 18:06.3), sophomore Luke Cruz (63rd, 19:41.1), senior Antonio Lorta (68th, 19:49.8) and junior Owen Lanham (80th, 20:02.8). In the top five for the Wildcat girls were sophomore Abigail Dunn (22nd, 21:05.5), freshman Trista Connelly (37th, 21:26.3), junior Ella Russell (46th, 21:43.2) and senior Elana Campton (48th, 21:45.0).

Juniors Caragan Connelly (50th, 21:51.5) and Kayla Kirby (54th, 21:59.2) weren’t far behind on the girls side. Steve Barnes said Kirby should be among the team’s better runners, but she lost a shoe during the Centerville race.

Kirby, Campton, Caragan Connelly, Russell and senior Peyton Reid have returned this season for the girls. This is the first year of varsity cross country for Butler, Dunn and Trista Connelly, who all play soccer at Harrison (as does Caragan Connelly).

“We have eight girls that are really competing for those seven varsity spots,” Barnes said. “From week to week, I could see any of those girls being in our top five. Our younger girls are just competitors. It’s a huge crowd and a very competitive race at Centerville and everybody gets out really fast, and they didn’t shy away from that.

“On paper, we probably have the best girls team in school history. Probably the most impressive thing is we’re going to have a good pack. Hopefully we’ll be inside of a lot of teams’ third, fourth and fifth runners.”

Butler admitted she was a bit nervous in her first varsity race.

“It was a little scary, but I did way better than I expected,” Butler said. “Actually, right when the gun went off, I was feeling good. My legs felt good, so I just went out and raced.”

“Chloe and Trista may be freshmen, but those two have such positive attitudes,” Barnes said. “They just look like they’re having fun every day.”

Rogers finished about 37 seconds behind Indian Hill’s Tyler Martin, who won the Centerville boys race in 17:06.8. Barnes said he’s not surprised that Rogers started the season with a bang.

“He’s a grinder who works really hard,” the Harrison coach said. “He had an incredible track season last spring. During indoor track last year, he ran a mile and he was not happy with his results. He was so unhappy that he just decided he was going to come out every day and work his butt off. He improved by over a minute in the two-mile and he continued to work all summer, and you see the results in his first race.”

Rogers said he didn’t realize he was doing as well as he did last Saturday. The Centerville course has a combination of flat-ground and hill running.

“I was moving pretty good, but I could’ve finished off better,” Rogers said. “Cramps slowed me down toward the end. I’ll clean that up next race.”

Rogers has competed in a mix of cross country, track and soccer since the seventh grade. He skipped cross country in his freshman and sophomore years, then came back to run meets only last season while playing soccer.

This year, it’s only cross country and track for him at Harrison. He still plays club soccer in the spring.

“I kind of went into high school wanting to play soccer and not really do that much running-wise,” Rogers said. “That changed sophomore year when I ran track and I was like, ‘Wow, I really enjoy this, so I’ll do cross country too.’ I did pretty well in seventh and eighth grade in cross country, and I missed it a lot.”

He said his mother floated the idea of becoming a cross country runner in the spring of his sixth-grade year.

“I decided to do it,” Rogers said. “Then comes summer training and my mom wakes me up at 8 a.m. and says, ‘Hey, it’s time to go to cross country.’ I’m like, ‘What? At 8 o’clock?’ That’s where it really started for me, and I realized pretty early on that I was pretty good at this. I had played soccer most of my life, so I was always active.”

Harrison’s boys team lost four seniors from last year’s squad, but Rogers, Mason Barnes, Lorta, Cruz, Lanham, junior Grayden Krise and senior Bennett Ahr are all returnees.

Steve Barnes, who’s assisted by Bob Napier, said his son missed most of the summer with a foot issue and is working toward getting back to full strength.

Both Wildcat teams made it to the Division II regional meet last season – the girls finished 10th and the boys were 13th. This year, the girls have moved up to Division I.

Harrison isn’t part of a league, so the postseason has added importance.

“We don’t have a league meet, so we can’t be league champions,” Barnes said. “We can’t have athletes be first-team all-league or anything like that, so those accolades don’t exist for us. Now the girls don’t have a district, so they can’t be district champs. It’s almost like you have to make it to state or you don’t have anything to show for it, which is a shame.”

Harrison will travel to Lexington, Ky., to compete in the Kentucky Track & Cross Country Coaches Association Meet of Champions at the Kentucky Horse Park on Oct. 17.

The Wildcats will return to action Saturday morning at the East Central (Ind.) Invitational.