March 29, 2024

Next Stop: Fort Dodge

Cardinal duo clinches state meet berths

PELLA — Jackson Mace-Maynard and Treycen Garton are both juniors at Newton High School.

They train together. They race together. And they push each other to be great.

On Wednesday, they added a new one. Mace-Maynard and Garton will run at next week’s state cross country meet together.

“They run all the time and push themselves constantly so I’m not that surprised that they both made it,” Newton boys’ head coach Steve Weeks said. “I tried not to over inflate where they were, but I knew we had something special on our hands. I knew they would both qualify in my heart.”

Mace-Maynard was third overall in the boys’ 5K race at the Class 3A state qualifier on a chilly and rainy evening at Pella Sports Park.

The top 15 finishers advanced to next week’s state meet at Lakeside Golf Course in Fort Dodge. Garton finished ninth and joined Mace-Maynard in the top 10 of best 5K times in NHS history.

“It feels great. This was my best race all year,” Mace-Maynard said. “I was shooting for top three today. I was happy with how I ran. I made some risky moves and it paid off.”

Mace-Maynard and Garton are the first state qualifiers for Weeks as a head coach and the first male state qualifiers at Newton since Cooper McDermott in 2012. Colten McDermott also qualified in 2008 and 2009.

“I’m so excited. I’m thrilled. I didn’t think in a million years that I would get ninth,” Garton said. “Top 15 maybe but not ninth.”

Both Mace-Maynard and Garton performed much better than expected by some. Mace-Maynard came into the meet with the sixth or seventh best time on the season and Garton was expected to finish on the back end of the top 15.

None of that matters after everyone approaches the starting line. And Mace-Maynard felt he was just as good as the three ranked runners in the field.

“Coming in, I think I was supposed to get sixth or seventh. And I haven’t been ranked all year, but I really believe I’m just as good as the ranked guys,” Mace-Maynard said. “There is no one here that’s really that much better than me.”

The unranked Mace-Maynard finished the 5K race in a career-best 16 minutes, 47.66 seconds.

Class 3A No. 30 Tony Schmitz of Pella won the race in 16:33.7. Unranked Brandon Kesner of Carlisle was second in 16:44.54.

Mace-Maynard was faster than 3A No. 18 Patrick DeRonde of Oskaloosa and 3A No. 25 Chase Lauman of Pella.

DeRonde was more than 30 seconds faster than Mace-Maynard at last week’s conference meet.

Garton also turned in a career-best time as he finished ninth in 16:57.39. The 15th and final state qualifier completed the 5K race in 17:12.12.

“I just tried to stay as close to Jackson as I could. I got ahead of him at one point,” Garton said. “He definitely pushes me and has been a big inspiration for what I have done. He’s helped me so much.”

Junior Derek Beiner finished 43rd for Newton with a time of 18:17.6. Junior Brennan Amos finished 57th in 18:58.94 and the final scoring runner was junior Hunter Kennedy in 60th with a time of 19:10.73.

Freshman Landon Menninga (19:21.1) was 65th and sophomore Leo Friedman (20:19.12) finished 79th.

“I’m fighting back tears of how proud I am of this team,” Weeks said. “These boys were resilient. We lost a lot of fun stuff this year, but they didn’t complain about it one bit. They really pushed themselves to be great.”

Newton was fifth in the team race with 172 points. The top three finishing teams advanced to the state meet.

Class 3A No. 2 Pella won with 40 points followed by 3A No. 8 Carlisle (73) and 3A No. 7 Mount Vernon/Lisbon (81). Fort Madison (156) was the other team ahead of Newton.

“If we don’t qualify for state as a team, day one of the offseason we are going back to work,” Weeks said. “We’ll start our road to state as soon as this year ends and that has to be where our mindset is.”

The 3A boys’ race at the Iowa High School Cross Country Championships begins at 4 p.m. on Oct. 30 in Fort Dodge.