Storm wipes out cross country and golf meets

Cross country runners do run in the rain. They do not compete during severe thunderstorms. Nor do golfers.

Severe weather swept across the area Tuesday afternoon and evening and washed out cross country meets. Newton High’s boys had a golf tournament at Ottumwa Tuesday afternoon, which was postponed until Sept. 30.

A freshman football game between Newton and Prairie City-Monroe at Monroe was postponed.

Newton and Lynnville-Sully were to have competed in the Grinnell Invitational. The meet was postponed until Thursday, but NHS’s Cardinal teams will be competing at the Johnston Invitational. Newton’s middle school cross country runners will compete at Grinnell on Thursday.

Colfax-Mingo’s cross country teams have to wait another two days to start their season. The Tigerhawks were scheduled to run in the Pekin Invitational at Oskaloosa, which was canceled. Colfax-Mingo is competing in the Johnston meet Thursday at Camp Dodge along with Newton.

Newton’s teams started the season on Aug. 28 at the Gilbert Invitational on the Iowa State University cross country course. The Cardinals have had two meets — Southeast Polk and Grinnell — wiped out by rain.

“It is always a little frustrating to have meets postponed or canceled, especially because each meet affects our practice plan and schedule for the season, but in my experiences as a coach, I’ve found there has to be a degree of flexibility,” said Tom Bartello, NHS boys’ head coach.

“We are going to look at adding a meet a little later in the season. This way, we still have a good number of meets to use to help us plan and prepare for our bigger goals at conference, districts and state. Until then, we remain a little disappointed for a missed opportunity to compete, but also grateful for the time to focus on improving in the specific areas we need to before we really dive into the competition side of our season.”

Bartello said he knows it is difficult for some of the runners, especially the seniors who know they have a limited number of races left to run in their careers at the high school level. The impact of missing a meet really depends on the time of the year and the make up of the team that Newton has, he said.

“While it would have been nice to have our meets this last week, it does provide us with an opportunity to focus more on our training,” Barello said. “We have been able to have better practice and training weeks last week and this week since we were not competing. With a team as young and as inexperienced as we are, I only have five returning athletes this year, it has been nice to get to work on more of the basics and foundation for those newer athletes.”

Newton girls’ coach Rachelle Tipton agreed with Bartello.

“In missing a meet last week we were able to have another great week of training, which meant the team was ready to run at Grinnell,” Tipton said. “While it’s disappointing to miss meets and lose some chances to adjust racing skills, it’s the meets at the end of the season that matter most.”

Contact Sports Editor Jocelyn Sheets at (641) 792-3121 Ext. 6535 or jsheets@newtondailynews.com.