By james art 
Gilbert XC boys by winning the 3A qualifying meet in Ames
Gilbert’s Logan Bleich, Jacob Tallman and Carson Squires talk about their dominant performance at the 3A cross country qualifying meet in Ames.
The 2024 Iowa High School Cross Country State Meet takes place Friday and Saturday at Lakeside Municipal Golf Course in Fort Dodge.
Multiple defending state champion runners and teams return for both the girls and boys races. There will also be a few newcomers to the event looking to make a name for themselves.
Class 3A and 4A competitors will compete on Friday. The 1A and 2A competitors will run on Saturday.
Ames Area will have three teams and three additional individual competitors from other schools on Friday. On Saturday, two teams and two individuals from the zone will compete.
Here are five things to look for from Ames-area athletes and teams heading into the 2024 Iowa State Cross Country Meet.
Will Gilbert’s boys repeat as 3A team champions?
A better question might be how decisively Gilbert will win the 3A boys state championship.
Gilbert has been teary-eyed throughout the season. The No. 1 Tigers have beaten every team they have faced, including No. 2 Pella on multiple occasions.
Gilbert includes a staggering four of the top 10 runners in 3A according to the Iowa Track and Field Coaches Association. Carson Squires, fresh off his win at the 3A qualifier in Ames, is ranked No. 3, followed by Logan Bleich at No. 4, Jacob Tallman at No. 7 and Emmett Barber at No. 10.
Emrick Ryan (#13) and Preston Stensland (#29) are also ranked.
Gilbert will be a heavy favorite to repeat as state champion. But the Tigers should still be at or near the top of their game because Pella includes No. 2 and defending 3A individual champion Canaan Dunham and No. 24 Mason Golke. Des Moines Christian also has three top-10 finishers in No. 6 Caleb Ten Pas, No. 9 Josh Hagenberg and No. 15 Luke Hagenberg.
How will the senior girls of Ames cement their legacy?
Ames seniors Claire Helmers and Lauren Rysdal have been part of four consecutive trips to the state meet.
Things haven’t always been easy for the Little Cyclone girls. Helmers is battling hip surgery, Risdal suffered a sophomore slump two years ago and they will be without a potential top-10 individual runner this season when senior Marley Turk sat out her senior year with a stress fracture.
But through it all they managed to persevere and excel. Ames’ girls placed third in 4A as a team in 2021, ninth in 2022 and 11th last season.
Helmers has gotten stronger with each meet since returning from his hip injury earlier this month, and Risdal had a great 4A qualifying meet in Council Bluffs to place third individually. With both runners carrying momentum and sophomore Emma Stanley and freshman Ophelia Harrelson rising, the Ames girls could turn some heads during Friday’s 4A competition.
Can the Ames boys finish in the top 10 in Class 4A?
The Ames boys fielded three runners last season – Brennen Bhave, Isaiah Knight and Eric Anderson.
Bhave and Knight are back and helped Ames qualify as a team this season after placing third in the Council Bluffs qualifying meet.
Bhave and Knight are seniors. Bhave placed seventh in the qualifying meet and is ranked No. 26 in 4A. Knight took 17th in the qualifying meet.
Junior Jonah Mittman and senior Zach Lenkaitis were right behind Knight in Council Bluffs, finishing 18th and 19th, respectively. Sophomore Jax Alvarez took 26th in the qualifying meet.
Status field 4A is loaded with names like No. 1 Dowling Catholic and No. 2 Cedar Falls. But if all five riders can improve their performances, Ames has an outside shot at a top-10 finish.
How will the Gilbert, RS and CM girls teams fare?
Gilbert battled inexperience and an injury to a key running back to make it to state.
The Tiger girls peaked with a second-place finish at the 3A qualifying meet in Ames. Junior Kiera Andersen is back healthy and she qualified for state individually, and senior Sarah Feddersen, a track star who hasn’t run cross country in 2023, had the best race of her career at the qualifying meet, placing third .
With veterans Sophia Bleich, Abby Patel and Mia Kautman there to help lead the way, and the rise of other newcomers alongside Feddersen like Caitlin Deere and Raya Mueller, Gilbert could surprise people in the state.
Roland-Story reached state as a team in 2A. Senior Claire Truesdell, the No. 16 runner in 2A, will run at Fort Dodge for the fourth year in a row, and she leads with her freshmen Gracie Haberl and Sophie Bates, juniors Kara Patterson, Andrea Ziegler and Brinley Carlson and senior Brooke Thompson.
At the 2A qualifying meet in Orange City, Truesdell placed fourth, and Bates and Patterson also qualified individually after finishing 13th and 14th, respectively. With so many young runners stepping up, the Norse girls could crack the 2A top 10.
Collins-Maxwell reached state with a second-place finish at the 1A qualifying meet in Jewell. Junior Jayden Peters, ranked No. 18 in 1A, took second in the meet and junior Cypress Erickson placed 12th.
Junior Triona Scott and freshman Adalynn Jolie placed 20th and 21st, respectively, in the qualifying meet, and sophomore Ava Pasquariello was 34th.
Last year, the Collins-Maxwell girls placed 15th out of 16 teams in 1A. The Spartans have a chance to move up a few spots in 2024.
Annika Larson of Ballard leads a group of individual qualifiers
There will be six runners from the Ames area who qualified individually but were not part of a qualifying team.
Ballard will have two runners in both the girls and boys.
Bomber senior Annika Larson won the 3A girls qualifier in Ames and is ranked No. 10 in 3A, giving her a chance to medal at state. Her senior classmate Bryn Wilson is also headed to Fort Dodge after placing ninth in the qualifying meet.
Max Davidson and Austin Vance will run at state for the Ballard boys. Davidson finished 15th and Vance 16th in the 3A boys qualifying race at Ames.
Roland-Story sophomore Korben Lucchesi will make first-team all-state. Lucchesi qualified for state after placing seventh in the 2A boys state qualifier in Orange City.
Colo-NESCO sophomore Elizabeth Erickson is back at state in the 1A girls meet for the second year in a row after taking fifth in the 1A qualifying meet at ACGC. Erickson placed 28th in 1A at last year’s state meet.
Larson and Erickson appear to have the best shot among the field’s individual qualifiers at qualifying.
Joe Randleman covers high school sports for the Ames Tribune. Contact him at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter at @JoeRandleman