Fremont runners pleased with strong finish to tough cross country season

Fremont runner Jo Gullo couldn't keep the tears from flowing when she first heard the news that the Silver Wolves had carved out a top five finish in the 5A girls cross country championships at Sugarhouse Park.

It many ways, it was a perfect ending for a team that struggled just to keep up with their peers in 5A. Fremont had paper-thin depth from the beginning of the season and dealt with injuries to key runners here and there.

Ending in the top five with powerhouse schools like Davis, Timpanogos, American Fork and Skyline made all the adversity and obstacles seem more bearable.

The Silver Wolves pushed themselves to finish in that elite company even though they were not considered a serious contender at the 5A meet.

"We put it on ourselves for our team," Gullo said. "We wanted to do it for our team. We kept saying, 'Pass up one more girl for your team.' We wanted to do well ourselves, but we wanted to do the best we could for everybody."

Gullo circumvented a giant obstacle of her own to reach the state meet and do her part for her team. The senior suffered a late-season stress fracture in her tibia. Wearing a protective splint during the week, then racing on Saturday, became ingrained into her weekly routine.

No matter what work it required, she was determined not to let the injury take over and call it a career.

"It refocused me," Gullo said. "The injury refocused my goals. When you're told you can't do something, it kind of sets your mind (to do it)."

Combating an injured leg didn't prevent Gullo from finishing 18th in the girl's three-mile race, with a time of 19 minutes and 49 seconds. She and teammate Jessie Chugg, who crossed the finish line 10 seconds earlier for 13th place, were the only Fremont runners among the top 20. Those finishes also built on their respective top 10 finishes at the Region 1 meet.

The Silver Wolves needed only two top 20 finishers to wildly exceed expectations — even ones it set for itself.

"They did awesome," said co-head coach Shalee Murray. "The girls worked hard, and they've been running great, so they had good races (at Sugarhouse Park)."

Murray and fellow head coach Ryan Ortega now must find a way to replace seniors like Chugg, Gullo, Heidi Krebs and Karin Price. They do return a trio of promising sophomores in Cherice Chugg, Blakely Charlesworth and Natalie Clark.

Chugg, in particular, showed serious potential after finishing 42nd at the state meet with a time of 20 minutes and 29 seconds. Both Chugg and Charlesworth also placed in the top 20 at the Region 1 meet.

But the program still needs to involve a larger group of runners to return it to a higher level of depth and talent it enjoyed in past years. Murray mentioned how Fremont had only 13 runners to draw on for this season's races and said shoring up those numbers is a major goal for next fall.

"We had so much depth before and now we're down to a lot less girls running," Murray said. "It's harder to build that team up again. But we're working on it. We'll hopefully get back up there."

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E-mail: jcoon@desnews.com