Look, we could speak in cliches when it comes to Wednesday’s Class 3A state qualifying cross country meet at Spencer Municipal Golf Course.

It’s anybody’s ballgame, so to speak.

You never know what’s going to happen when the runners hit the course.

Nothing is a given.

That’s all true, of course, but the reality is this — our No. 1-ranked boys’ and No. 2-ranked girls’ teams will be the favorites when racing gets underway at 4 p.m. Heavy favorites, actually. The type of favorites where it’s almost unthinkable that another team could sneak up from behind and pass them on the final leaderboards.

Seriously.

That’s what happens when you put a regular season together the way the Tigers have this fall. They’ve been dominant, capped by last week’s sweep of the Raccoon River Conference championships. Of the 15 ranked individuals in the two races on Wednesday, nine of them will wear Gilbert uniforms.

Understand now?

The top three teams and top 15 individuals in each race will advance to next week’s state meet at Lakeside Golf Course inside Kennedy Park on the outskirts of Fort Dodge. Twelve other schools — Algona, Sioux City Heelan, Boyden-Hull/Rock Valley, Denison-Schleswig, Humboldt, LeMars, MOC-Floyd Valley, Sergeant Bluff-Luton, Sioux Center, Spencer, Storm Lake, and Webster City — will join Gilbert on Wednesday.

Other ranked girls’ teams include: No. 10 Sioux Center, No. 12 MOC-Floyd Valley, and No. 15 Heelan. Also ranked on the boys’ side are: No. 10 MOC-Floyd Valley and No. 18 Sioux Center.

With such lofty expectations comes the pressure to perform, but Gilbert head coaches Laura Kautman and Aaron Thomas embrace that pressure, and so do their pupils.

“Pressure is a privilege, and we’ve earned that privilege with how we’ve raced all year long,” Kautman, the girls’ head coach, said. “We are the favorites and we like that at this point.”

“If we do what we’re supposed to do, we should be fine,” Thomas, the boys’ head coach, said. “There are a lot of teams there that we haven’t seen, but regardless of who is and isn’t there, we just want to race well so that we can build that confidence for the state meet.”

Thomas’s club possesses six of the eight ranked individuals in the field, led by the underclassmen trio of freshman Logan Bleich (ranked No. 5), freshman Jacob Tallman (No. 9), and sophomore Carson Squiers (No. 13). Bleich and Tallman went 1-2 at last week’s conference meet, and Thomas says there hasn’t been a stage that has been too big for them this fall.

“They don’t seem like freshmen,” Thomas said. “We’ve run at big meets, like at Heartland or conference or Ballard, and they really haven’t let the moment get to them.”

Senior Zain Mueller enters the postseason ranked No. 15, sophomore Preston Stensland sits at No. 24, and senior Harrison Kraehling is No. 27.

Emmett Barber, a junior who was also ranked at various points throughout the season, will round out the roster.

Thomas sees Wednesday’s run as just another step toward the ultimate goal, which is a state championship 10 days later. But first things first on a flat Spencer course that should produce some fast times.

Fittingly enough, the last time Gilbert ran a state qualifier on the Spencer course was during its state championship 2017 season.

“When we went there in 2017, we ran well and had some fast times,” Thomas said. “As long as it’s not windy, you’re going to run fast on that course and it builds confidence for state.”

Freshman Emee Dani (No. 19-ranked), sophomore Keira Andersen (No. 20), and senior Clare Stahr (No. 25) spent the regular season swapping the team lead for the Tiger girls, and that competition at the front of races has fueled the team’s success. Dani emerged as the front-runner late in the season and challenged the school’s 5K record — she fell just four seconds short — en route to a runner-up finish at the league meet.

That friendly competition will likely continue on Wednesday.

“When you have competitive people, you’re always going to have that,” Kautman said. “That pushes them to be better, and that’s why we’ve had the success that we’ve had. When the race is over, they high-five each other and they hug each other.”

Dani, Andersen, and Stahr have forced their teammates to move faster as well, something that was apparent at the RRC meet when the Tigers put all seven runners in the top 17. Freshman Callie Hales, junior Abby Patel, sophomore Maggie Danilson, and junior Sophia Bleich will look to continue to show that talented depth in Spencer.

“We’ve been more effective this year with front-running than maybe we have been in the past,” Kautman said. “All year long, our mentality has been you belong. We run and race with confidence, and that’s not going to change going into the postseason.”

Denison-Schleswig junior Lola Mendlik is the highest-ranked girl in the field at No. 18.

We’ll be in Spencer on Wednesday for the state qualifying meet. Look for updates once the races end, and plenty of photos following the completion of the meet.

Go Tigers!

As I sit down on my couch to write this Sunday morning, it’s been approximately 35 hours since the final horn sounded to end the highly-anticipated football showdown between Gilbert and Bondurant-Farrar, two highly-ranked teams in Class 4A. That time has given me a chance to reflect on what transpired and I’ve come up with five “big picture” takeaways.

Some of them you may like. Some of them may make you grumble and want to yell at me. I just hope all of them make you think and reflect as well.

Let’s go.

1. The final score doesn’t tell the story.

To the outsiders, they’ll see that final score — Bondurant-Farrar 38, Gilbert 7 — and think it was a one-sided blowout. The Bluejays dominated, they’ll say, before they cast Gilbert aside as an also ran.

Those outsiders are wrong. Incredibly wrong.

Look, Bondurant-Farrar was the better team over 48 minutes of hard hits. It just was, and that’s OK to admit. The Bluejays have got size, they’ve got depth, and they’ve got talent. Serious talent (I’m talking specifically about you, Titus Cram). They deserved to win the game.

And now comes that BUT …

Gilbert won the first quarter, and through three quarters was in that game. Remember, it was 17-7 entering the fourth quarter, and were it not for a questionable personal foul call that kept a Bluejays’ drive alive late in the third, it very well could have been 10-7 entering those final 12 minutes.

And that brings me to this …

2. The referees did NOT decide the outcome.

If you were in attendance or watched the livestream Friday night, you know there were some eyebrow-raising whistles and flags. The aforementioned personal foul was big, and then the inadvertent whistle on a muffed punt by Bondurant-Farrar took a fumble recovery away from Gilbert and led to one of the Bluejays’ three fourth-quarter touchdowns.

Were they factors in the final margin? Yeah, I think you could say that. But did they change which team won the game? Emphatically, no.

Bondurant-Farrar out-gained Gilbert by 300 yards, 425-125, including 264-58 on the ground. The Bluejays limited Gilbert to 1.9 yards per carry.

And that’s why the host team won. Period.

3. One game was lost. The season was not lost.

In your mind, let’s transport ourselves back to August 1 and I’m going to present you with a hypothetical: Going into Week 8 of the regular season, Gilbert owns a 6-1 record. Would you take that?

If you didn’t answer “YES!” immediately, then you may be lying to yourself.

Coming off back-to-back seasons in which the Tigers were a combined 1-17, what head coach Graham Lundt, his coaching staff, and the boys have done this season is nothing short of remarkable. First of all, they put in the time — blood, sweat, and, yeah, there have probably been some tears — and work to make this season a reality. They all deserve a standing ovation and applause until our hands hurt.

One game, one loss, doesn’t dampen everything that came before it, nor does it rip away this team’s primary goal.

The Tigers want to make the playoffs. Sure, a win over Bondurant-Farrar would have made the road a bit more wide open, but a loss certainly didn’t close that road.

There are two big games — two tough games — remaining. Newton and Pella are both very good. But, news flash, Gilbert is a good team too.

Stay focused. Stay hungry. And the rest will take care of itself.

4. Ignore the outside noise.

You could piggyback this onto that last paragraph of the third takeaway.

Look, it’s easy to get caught up in the noise online. People talk, people give opinions, and some people enjoy being outlandish with their words, particularly on Twitter (or X, if you will) when it comes to sports.

My advice to everyone: Ignore it. And, maybe more importantly, don’t feed into it.

Those of us that have watched our boys play this season know we have a good football team. The coaches know it. The players know it. So the harsh words of someone hiding behind a fake name on Twitter who hasn’t seen our boys play mean absolutely nothing.

If the players and coaches can stay focused on the positives and what is ahead, then so should we. It’s as simple as that.

5. We watched two of the state’s best players.

I don’t profess to be a football expert, but I am fairly confident in what I’m about to write: our own Will Hawthorne and Bondurant-Farrar’s Titus Cram will wear football uniforms again after they graduate from high school.

I can’t begin to tell you how fun it was to be on the sideline and watch those two play Friday night. They are both first-team all-state football players, and anyone who thinks differently is just wrong.

There was a play in the third quarter that stands out to me. Cram broke free on a run down the Gilbert sideline, and here came Hawthorne sprinting toward him at an angle. The collision occurred not 3 feet away from me, and the sound it emitted was unbelievable. Not only the  impact, but the grunting from both players … it sounded like two grizzly bears attacking one another.

This was just one of many, many … many times they collided on the night. And on a number of occasions, they patted each other on the helmet after the play was over, the universal football sign of respect for an opponent.

Like I said, it was fun to watch that game within a game.

The entire night was fun (the final score notwithstanding). We all watched two really good 4A football teams. Let’s do it all again next Friday night!

On November 7, Gilbert Community School District voters will go to the polls to vote on a variety of things, one of them being the Bond Referendum offered by the school district.

The proposed $35 million bond would include a new elementary school, as well as additions and renovations to our other three buildings — the intermediate, middle school, and high school — as well as the addition of a new practice track and field to replace the old track currently at the intermediate.

There are a number of ways voters can find information on the Bond Referendum and have their questions answered, including by clicking HERE to view our Bond Information website.

In addition, Superintendent Dr. Christine Trujillo will host several community informational meetings leading up to the vote. Those dates can also be found by clicking HERE.

Alice Zhang, National Merit Scholar Semifinalist.

It has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?

We are thrilled to announce that Gilbert High School senior Alice Zhang, 17, recently learned the exciting news that she is among the less than 1 percent of high school graduating seniors in the Class of 2024 nationally to make the cut as a national semifinalist for the prestigious scholarship.

Alice received the news in front of the entire senior class early last week during a meeting in the auditorium. High School instructional coach Jen Schnormeier made the announcement, and the entire class applauded Alice’s achievement.

“To have a National Merit Semifinalist is exciting,” Gilbert High School Principal Cindy Bassett said. “Gilbert High School has a lot of pride in Alice, and her peers are genuinely excited for her. She’s a hard worker, she cares greatly for academics, and she loves to learn.”

Alice earned her spot in the semifinals with her performance on the PSAT test — she scored a 1,500 — during her junior year. She will now submit an application and essay in the hopes of advancing to the finals. Students must also take and score well on the SAT or ACT to advance. Alice certainly has that part already covered; she scored a perfect 36 on the ACT.

The finalists will be announced in February.

Alice says she’s still weighing her options on her college choice, but says she wants to study mathematics.

“I think I would enjoy being a statistician, but there are some other areas I could pursue as well,” Alice said.

We would like everyone to join Gilbert Schools in congratulating Alice on this tremendous accomplishment, and we wish her luck as she attempts to become a National Merit Scholar Finalist. We’re all cheering you on, Alice!