By Ryan Murken

Your Prep Sports

IOWA CITY – Bailey Nock enters her senior season facing the same situation she encountered two seasons ago as a sophomore.

For the second time in three seasons the West High standout opens the year the top-ranked individual in the Class 4A cross country rankings.

Nock entered her sophomore season coming off a third-place state finish as a freshman but struggled with the weight of the preseason ranking and injuries on her way to a seventh-place finish at state.

“I definitely could have handled it better,” Nock said of the ranking. “Seeing the number one ranking it just kind of scared me right away. I was nervous because I had never thought of myself as being at the top.”

All the pressure and expectations of two seasons ago await Nock again this fall.

After winning the Class 4A state title last season Nock has seen recruiting attention pick up and once again opens the season atop the Iowa Association of Track Coaches rankings.

The circumstances are similar to her sophomore season but this year there is a whole new Bailey Nock waiting to take them.

“She has put herself in an incredible position,” West High coach Mike Parker said. “She is being recruited by every top program in the country, the University of Colorado, the University of Michigan. If we were to look at football that would mean Alabama and Clemson. Those schools as well as many others see what we see in practice every day and that’s a whole new Bailey.”

Nock showed early on in her career that she had the talent to be one of the best in West High history, capping her freshman season with a third-place finish at the Class 4A state meet.

With the top two finishers from the 4A race lost to graduation Nock opened the 2015 season on top of the 4A rankings.

The jump to number one was a lot to process for a sophomore with one season of high school cross country to her credit.

“The very first day of practice the preseason rankings come out and she is the number one ranked cross country girl and that was a lot of weight for her to take and she didn’t respond to that as well as she will now,” Parker said. “Back then it was ‘oh my gosh, so and so wasn’t in the race. This girl is so good I shouldn’t be ranked number one’.”

A stress fracture sidelined Nock for a stretch at the start of her sophomore season.

The late start combined with the weight of high expectations played a role in a seventh-place finish that ranked as disappointing by Nock’s high standards.

“That definitely got to me because I was young and I saw all these seniors and thought no way I belong up there,” Nock said. “It definitely got to my head the pressure.”

Nock came into her junior season healthy and slowly but steady began an ascent toward becoming the most dominant distance runner in the state.

She didn’t win a race until the state meet when she finished better than three seconds in front of Jessica McKee of Johnston in a time of 18:06.09 to become the sixth individual state champion in West High history.

That race at the state meet flipped a switch for Nock.

“Bailey wouldn’t be someone that I would say her freshman and sophomore year was a very confident person when she went to the starting line,” Parker said. “Bailey wasn’t even the number one runner on our team throughout the season then to win that one it really solidified it.”

The state cross country title was just the start for Nock.

Suddenly she didn’t worry about who else was in the field, her focused narrowed, her training intensified and most importantly her belief in her own abilities skyrocketed.

“I hadn’t really won a meet leading up to that when I finally won state it was this wakeup call that I can do things that I thought were impossible,” Nock said. “Going into track I was like I don’t have to sit back and watch other people go after the things that I want. I started to realize I could be up to that level so I started to push myself harder.”

Nock was simply dominant at the state track meet in May.

She completed the state’s distance triple crown, adding 4A titles in the 3,000 and 1,500 and anchored the West High distance medley to another state tile just for good measure.

Her performance helped West High to a 4A runner-up finish and solidified her as one of the best in the state.

“Someone as great as Bailey there are the stepping stones that they go through,” Parker said. “They believe that they can win and then they kind of run from behind and see if they can win and then the next step is what

Bailey did at the state track meet. It’s, ‘I’m going to win, I’m going to the front, I’m going to separate myself’. The biggest transformation for Bailey has been her head.”

Nock is back in the spotlight.

She’s a highly sought after recruit by some of the nation’s top programs and is trying to become the first back-to-back Class 4A champion in a decade.

This time the new Bailey Nock is prepared.

“We have been working on it since then and this year I much more confident in myself,” Nock said. “It’s not a cockiness like I’m number one but it’s more of a staying humble and keep working approach.

State track definitely helped put me in the mindset that this year I can go after everything I want. If I work hard there is nothing that should hold me back. The only thing that would hold me back is myself.”