By Ryan Murken

Your Prep Sports

IOWA CITY – You don’t build one of the top cross country programs in the state without planning ahead.

Over the last two decades Mike Parker has used his knack for projecting future success to turn West High into a perennial power.

With a small group of returners back from a squad that finished fifth at state last year and the biggest incoming freshman class of his 23-year tenure Parker imagined 2017 as a rebuilding year of sorts.

Instead the future plan for Parker has moved ahead of schedule.

West High enters the Class 4A state cross country meet on Saturday at Lakeside Golf Course in Fort Dodge ranked second and seeking a top-three finish and spot on the balcony for the first time since 2009.

“Only two of the girls that will be running for us were even on the roster last year and usually when you have that kind of an influx it’s what they would call a rebuilding year or at least a developing year,” Parker said. “And this has been one of our best years.”

Thanks to an impressive senior season from 2016 4A champion Bailey Nock, the emergence of senior Colleen Bloeser and a superb effort from a talented freshman class led by Kiara Malloy-Salgado the thoughts of a rebuilding season proved to be a rare miscalculation for Parker.

West High won the title at last week’s state qualifier by 35 points to return to the state meet for the 23rd consecutive season under Parker where it expects to battle defending state champion and top-ranked Johnston for the 4A crown.  

The Women of Troy haven’t finished in the top two at the state meet since winning a state title in 2004.

“This is why we all coach,” Parker said. “We’ve had years where we predicted that we would be great, we had this vision of all the great things we were going to achieve and those are exciting but there are years like this year when you come in and think this is going to be a year where we are really going to need to coach to survive and with what we had coming we figured we were going to have to really coach to get to state.”

Parker knew what he had in Nock.

An elite level competitor the senior is attempting to become the first back-to-back 4A champion since West Des Moines Dowling’s Katie Flood won two in a row in 2006 and 2007.

After Nock, no one at West High had any idea what to expect.

“It’s been extremely impressive what they’ve been able to do,” Nock said. “We had no idea what to expect going into the season so it’s been very exciting.”

It didn’t take long for the West High newcomers to make their mark.

In her first varsity race senior Colleen Bloeser finished runner-up to Nock at the season-opening Trojan Early Bird Invitational.

Nock knew after that first meet this season has potential to be special.

“After the first meet when we had a bunch of younger girls up front I could see it then what we could do,” Nock said. “Colleen got second right behind me and that was really, really exciting. I knew after our first meet that we had a lot of potential.”

A talented group of freshmen completed the overhaul of the new-look West High lineup.

Malloy-Salgado leads the group of freshmen that accounts for four of the seven spots in the West High lineup.

Freshmen Erica Buettner, Katie Hoefer and Lucy Westemeyer join Malloy-Salgado, Nock Bloeser and junior Deniz Ince as varsity regulars.

“There is something refreshing about new naïve athletes and boy we’ve got them,” Parker said. “Four of our seven are going to be freshman and Colleen this is all new to her as well. It’s exciting to get to coach those kinds of girls. There is something exciting about getting to this level with people like that.”

There is a reason the success of the West High freshmen has come as a surprise, Malloy-Salgado herself didn’t enter the season expecting to be ranked in the top 30 entering the state meet.

“I had no clue what I was getting myself into,” Salgado said. “I was just like ‘I’m going to go run and see how I do.”

Malloy-Salgado quickly became a front of the pack runner and quickly adjusted her expectations.

She put an exclamation point on what was a stellar pre-state meet season finishing runner-up to Nock at the state qualifier last week.

“I didn’t really have any expectations to start the year,” Malloy-Salgado said. “Really, I was just going to wing it and see how I did and now, I’m expecting myself to do better every meet, to improve and to adjust my strategy.”

Malloy-Salgado enters the state meet ranked 26th in Class 4A.

“She reminds me a lot of Sarah Wickman. When Sarah Wickman was a freshman she just really said point me in the direction coach, show me where the finish is and I will just run until I get ahead of everybody. That is really about the extent of her knowledge and understanding and there is something refreshing about that.”