Franklin Central’s Evan Farmer (208) edges Greenfield-Central’s Liam Brinkruff (274) by .1 second to take 26th place at the Shelbyville Semi-State Saturday. Brinkruff was still able to place high enough to advance to this weekend’s IHSAA Boys Cross Country State Finals.
Rob Baker | For The Daily Reporter
SHELBYVILLE — In a fast race, Mt. Vernon’s Tristan Trevino and Greenfield-Central’s Griffen Wheeler and Liam Brinkruff were among the fastest.
At Saturday’s Shelbyville Semi-State at Blue River Memorial Park, Trevino, Wheeler and Brinkruff, by finishing in the Top 10 of runners not on advancing teams, qualified for this Saturday’s IHSAA Boys Cross Country State Finals at Terre Haute’s LaVern Gibson Championship Cross Country Course.
Greenfield-Central finished ninth (278) and Mt. Vernon finished 11th (307) in the team standings. Only the top six teams moved on to Terre Haute.
There were 11 Top 25 state-ranked teams in the Shelbyville race, including the Cougars at No. 22 and the Marauders at No. 23. No. 1 Carmel (67), No. 2 Zionsville (74), No. 5 Center Grove (83), No. 4 Noblesville (129) No. 14 Brebeuf (163) and No. 7 Franklin Central (201) earned the top six positions.
No. 13 Brownsburg, No. 18 Bishop Chatard and No. 20 Westfield were also eliminated from the state’s team competition. Chatard was seventh (227), Brownsburg eighth (242) and Westfield 10th (304).
Race winner Kole Mathison, of Carmel, set a course record with a 5K time of 14:56.1.
Trevino, a senior who qualified for the state meet for the second straight year, ran a personal best time of 15:30.0 and finished in fifth place, best among runners that were not on qualifying teams.
“I knew I was going to go out fast, but I didn’t know I’d go out that fast,” Trevino said of working to stay in the lead group. “I was glad I was able to stay mentally tough and keep pushing. I felt like I wasn’t where I should have been, but I never thought I went out too fast. In those times you can’t really think about that, you just have to go.
Trevino has dropped time in each of his postseason races.
“Very few runners can run their best (at the semi-state),” Mt. Vernon coach Bruce Kendall said. “There’s so much competition. They all go out hard. They can’t run normal races. The competition is just nuts.
“(Trevino) has got a gear and a mindset of where he is going to be. Then we try to duplicate that (for the race).”
“At the 3K and 4K, I kept thinking about the movie Cars and how he’s hopping to the end on a popped tire. That’s exactly how I felt,” Trevino added. “I was running from people.”
Greenfield-Central coach Aaron Smith said his team of seven went out too fast, but Wheeler and Brinkruff were able to hold on to earn another week of competition.
“We were hoping to get two (to state),” Smith said. “We knew it’d be hard to get three. Our top three guys all went out way too fast. I think they were around 2:51 for the first kilometer. They were seventh, eighth and ninth in the race. One of them really paid for it, Chris Ross, he ended up at 16:30 (46th of 179 runners), about 10 seconds slower than last week. Liam and Griffen, it was a miserable race for the both of them, but they hung on.”
Wheeler was 23rd with a time of 15:56.3. Brinkruff got the ninth advancing spot by placing 27th in 16:06, a personal best time for the junior.
Brinkruff was three seconds faster than Luke Moster, who took the final individual spot, and five seconds in front of Westfield’s Sam Hinds, who was the first individual just outside the Top 10 and 33rd overall.
“It was reminiscent of our first race this year (at the Terre Haute Kickoff),” Brinkruff said, referring to the meet at the state championship course that included some of the state’s top teams. “I went out and led it with some of the best kids in the state. I tried to stay on as much as I could (Saturday). I was No. 7 at the 1K. I definitely wasn’t going to finish with those guys. I was just trying to stay on for as long as possible.
“I was pretty confident to hang on when I got to the two-mile (mark) … The last straight away, 600 (meters out) once you get over the mound, that’s always crazy. I was just trying to pass as many people. I didn’t know how close I was to making it.”
Wheeler admitted he went out too fast and it was definitely a matter of hanging on and picking off runners until the end.
“At the 1K mark, I came through around 2:47 and my first thought was, ‘Oh, my God, what am I doing?’” Wheeler said. “I could see coach Smith at some points. I’d hear him say, ‘Go, go!’ and one point, he said, ‘You have to go, this isn’t good.’ I was nervous about it, but I knew all the guys and all the names and who was supposed to be in front of me and even two spots behind me. I would hear other people say their names so I was able to hear that and click off who was in front of me.”
While Trevino will be a returnee for the state meet. Wheeler and Brinkruff are the first G-C boys cross country team members to make it to state since Jacob Hansen in 2016. Prior to Hansen, the last and only other state qualifier was Gary Holt in 1989.
In 2019, Audrey Brinkruff, Liam’s older sister, was the first from the girls team to qualify for state.
“It’s pretty much the same things as she did,” Liam said. “Her junior year, she wasn’t quite expected to make it. I know a lot of web sites gave me a 10 percent chance to make it on and I got it. Her senior year, she got appendicitis the week before the state meet and she couldn’t make it because of that. I am glad I got through this year so even if something bad like that happens, I can say I went to state.”
For county runners, following Ross, Eastern Hancock’s Preston Markley placed 62nd in 16:49.4. Mt. Vernon’s No. 2 runner Amhed Saleh was 66th in 16:52.4.
