Published: October 29, 2009 10:33 pm      

CROSS COUNTRY: Dogs continue their stellar season

New Albany boys bound for IHSAA State Meet

The New Albany boys’ cross country team has not hid from lofty expectations this season.

The team said before the year started it would be the first to win a Hoosier Hills Conference title in school history — which it did. It said it would reserve a second-straight spot in the IHSAA state finals — which it claimed last weekend at the Brown County Semistate.

So you won’t exactly be surprised to see the Bulldogs are setting the bar pretty high once again as they head to state on Saturday at the Laverne Gibson Course in Terre Haute.

“We’ve got a goal to finish top-15 and our ultimate goal is the top 10,” said Bulldog head coach Paul Hamilton. “That’s not going to be easy, Indiana is regarded as a great state for cross country. But I stopped putting anything past my guys a long time ago. I’ll be really interested to see how they perform.”

The numbers suggest that New Albany is in for a challenge. The Bulldogs were the final team to secure a state berth last weekend, finishing sixth at semistate — meaning it was one of the final four teams in the state to make berth. The popular Indiana running Web site Indianarunner.com has seeded New Albany 24th among the 24 squads in the event.

“It’s a challenge and we’ll be up for it,” said Hamilton. “We knew going to semistate that there was nothing but quality teams left for us to run against from this point forward and we were able to make it out. We have to have that mindset again.”