With dependable upperclassmen, the North Platte boys’ cross-country team is going to be counting on Noah Heckman and Josh Schaffart when it runs 5Ks this fall.
North Platte junior Noah Heckman broke the program record with his time at state last year.
Since both Heckman and Schaffart have been to state before, they will be expected to make another appearance this season. In 2021, Heckman finished in 16th place to set the new state program record and Schaffart ended in 30th place at the Class 2 State Meet.
“Our goal for Noah is to get him top-10 at state,” North Platte head cross-country coach Brendan Cary said. “Josh has knocked on the door of being an all-stater in two of his three years; this year we want him to make that jump to get to the top-25 and finish his cross-country career as an all-stater.”
Wesley Meadows is the Panthers’ other senior and junior Mark Humes is coming back out for the first time since junior high. Hunter Palmer, Drake Keraus, and Jackson Cassity are three freshmen who are looking to contribute.
“Our mindset is can we take our top two guys and make them better and then use that to get the rest of the team better; then bringing in the freshman guys and the younger guys to see if they can solidify the back end enough to make us competitive as a team,” Cary said.
North Platte only lost one senior from last year, Gabe Goodlet, so it has a lot of younger guys who can fill that spot. Waylon McCraken is a sophomore dual sport athlete with football and cross-country.
“If our five or seven are good enough to be in that top and get to the state meet, which we haven’t been able to do in a few years, that’s great. If we get better throughout the season and have two state qualifiers, that’s great; we spend all our emotional energy on how to get better and how to motivate the teammates throughout the season,” Cary said.
This season officially is the start of the second decade for the North Platte cross-country program, with the first team bring assembled in 2012. The Panthers are looking to take every day to improve as it has in many previous years.
“This is going on the eleventh year, and we are getting better every year and its decade two of the program so where is our next step. We weren’t great straight out the gate, it’s been a slow progression as the years have passed,” Cary said.