A Perfect Plan

Some cross country runners play checkers.

Janette Schraft plays chess.

For her final state cross country meet, the Glenwood senior decided she would not sprint out and hastily take the pack lead, as was her custom.

This time, she decided before the race, she’d watch the race develop and let the leaders declare themselves on the board while she sat back, calculating her pace and plotting her moves like a grandmaster.

It’s hard to imagine Schraft’s gambit coming together any better than it did Saturday at the Iowa State Cross Country Meet in Fort Dodge.

Schraft waited until the final 800 meters and slowly and methodically passed No. 2 seeded Ainsley Erzen of Carlisle and then two-time defending champion Adrianna Katcher of Center Point-Urbana to win hers and Glenwood’s first cross country state title.

Going into the race, Schraft said she knew it was possible to succeed today, provided she didn’t have a repeat of her previous two trips to state when she was a member of the East Mills cross country team. She enrolled at Glenwood just prior to the start of this season.

Schraft’s sophomore year she battled the flu and placed 11th at state cross country. The following year, Schraft placed eighth but wasn’t 100 percent after a car accident the night before state left her shook up and bruised.

All that pre-race planning and the support of her coaches and teammates helped ease her mind and pull her focus away from her previous state meets.

“I knew I couldn’t go all out at once and burn out, I had to ebb away at it and ebb away at it,” Schraft said. Going into the last six hundred meters there was just maybe a little bit of doubt in the back of my head but I pushed that away as fast as I could. I told myself this was something I could compete at and I kept chipping away slowly.”

Schraft finished with a time of 18:22.50, eight seconds better than runner up Katcher.

The move from Class 1A to Class 3A seemed not to phase Schraft at all this season. She won every race she ran in this year.

“I think growing, not only physically but also mentally as I’ve progressed through high school has helped,” Schraft said. “I think having gone into Class 3A as a freshman I might have been a little more intimidated and maybe shut myself down. But I knew if I just kept working and PR’ing away I did all season, and with my team, I could be successful.”

Glenwood girls cross country coach Dani Woodman wasn’t surprised at all Schraft topped the field on Saturday. She’d seen the moment building all fall.

“I think we were all fully confident she was capable of winning this race,” Woodman said. ‘I don’t know that Janette quite believed that as much as everyone else around her did. When you’re able to compare her times and having watcher her race all season, I fully believed she could do this.”

After the race, Schraft was quick to credit her teammates on her historic day.

“There’s some absolutely amazing girls on this team,” she said. “They made the whole transition so much easier for me. I know it sounds cliché but I genuinely could not have done it without them. They motivated me everyday in practice, they took the work out of the work and they made the best out of every situation.”

Schraft had no trouble putting into words what it means to be Glenwood’s first cross country champion.

“It feels amazing to give back to Glenwood the way they’ve given to me,” she said. “I know I’ve only been there for two months but I know there’s no way I could give back what they gave to me.”