Northern's new sport ready for debut

The sport of cross country is nothing new to the fall. And it’s certainly not new to the Hi-Line. But it is new on the campus of Montana State University-Northern.

For the first time in school history, Northern has cross country as an official sport, and the university chose former Havre Blue Pony great Chad Spangler to head up the program. Spangler began putting together his new Lights and Skylights teams last spring, and now, his teams are about to make their debut.

“We had a great fall camp this first year,” Spangler said. “We spent two weeks training and getting to know each other before school started — it was a lot of fun. It's clear we have some really good kids to start a program with. And, based on the turnout for our first fun run, we obviously have a lot of support in the community. That's so important, for any student-athlete.”

Spangler does have a lot of good runners for Northern’s inaugural cross country season. And many of them have local ties.

The Lights have five local runners on a roster of nine. Included in that group are former Havre High runners Jamie Lieberg and Sundance Lodge, both of whom competed at the Class A state cross country meet a year ago.

The Lights also added a trio of standout runners from the area, in Rocky Boy’s Tristen Belgarde, Box Elder’s Will Ketchum and Harlem’s Tristen Gone. All three have medals from state meets in distance running, and all three are set to be standouts on the Northern team.

Rounding out Northern’s men’s roster is Nick Bear of Dodson, Justin Seevers of Bozeman, Patrick Yuhas of Helena and Alex Williams of Glassboro, New Jersey.

Spangler also signed seven women to run for the Skylights in their first season, and again, local talent was key. Three former Blue Ponies, McKenna Barkus, Sydney Huston and Breck Don will all compete for the Skylights this season. Barkus and Huston have cross country experience, while Don was a standout tennis and volleyball player at HHS.

Northern also has former North Star standout Alissa Borlaug on its roster, while Amelia Clark of Colstrip and Courtney Cota and Rachel Nelson of Roundup round out the Skylights lineup.

“I think the big thing for this first year is to establish a program that we can build on,” Spangler said. “Our team motto this year is Kaizen, which means continuous improvement. As a team we feel this fits because we're not aiming to win the national championship this year. Rather, we want continuous improvement in our runners and our program. That said, just because we're a focused more on process-goals this year, I still think we can be competitive if we continue with our current training intensity. We have some fast, experienced male runners in Tristen Belgarde, Jamie Lieberg, Will Ketchum and Tristin Gone. On the female side, we have strong leadership and productivity in our sophomore runners McKenna Barkus, Breck Don and Courtney Cota. McKenna ran for Rocky Mountain College last year and brings important experience to our very young team. Alissa Borlaug, Amelia Clark and Rachel Nelson are all true freshmen with a ton of potential.”

Potential is something that can be realized and, now, Northern gets to do it for real in cross country. Northern, and UM-Western are both first-year programs in the Frontier, which also has teams from Rocky Mountain College, Carroll College and Lewis-Clark State and UGF. MSU-N has four meets on its schedule, then will head to the Frontier Conference championships Nov. 6 in Great Falls.

“I'm so excited to see how we match up with the other runners in the Frontier Conference,” Spangler said.

The Lights and Skylights will race for the first time Sept. 11 at the Carroll College Early Bird Meet. They will also race at both the Montana State and Montana Invitationals, as well as the UGF Invitational.