Nederland Middle School sports are back this year. Eleven middle schoolers came out for the cross country team this season. The season is short. However, each member of the team showed improvement and Coach Kathy Butler declared it a great season.

Middle school cross country racers run 3km or 1.7 - 1.85 miles. This year the races were held at Eldorado K-8 School, Southern Hills Middle School, Platt Middle School and Harlow Platts Park in Boulder.

Coach Kathy said her goals this season were to help each runner improve their running ability while uniting them as a team as well. She said, “We have been working a lot on pacing and figuring out how to run their best races for their own individual background and ability. We have also worked a lot on fundamentals like running form and some basic strength and mobility aspects of running.”

She said that everyone was willing to try to get better and at the age they are at she sees such big improvement in such a short amount of time.

The cross country runners this year were; Sixth graders: Evelyne Stanton, Nate Wilson, Libby Chandler. Seventh graders: Sam Downing Lutz, Autumn Roberts, Soren Pratt Useckas, Gray River Pearl. Eighth graders: Abigail Hess, Ruby Gustafson, Jace Thurston, Eliza Brundege.

This is Kathy Butler’s first season coaching Nederland Middle School’s Cross Country team. She has years of coaching experience, even coaching Nederland’s High School team years ago, and is an extremely accomplished athlete. She has coached at the college level as well as the elite post- collegiate level. Currently she is the coach at a running club in Boulder called Run Boulder AC.

Coach Kathy started running when she was 10 years old. She said she was inspired by great coaches, her parents and later as a professional athlete she was inspired by her husband.

Butler competed in two Olympic Games and 21 World Championships. She was born in Scotland and has lived in Scotland, England, Canada and now the United States for several years. In 1996 the summer Olympics were in Atlanta, Georgia, and Butler competed for team Canada running in the 5000m race. In 2004 the Olympics were in Athens, Greece, and she was part of team Great Britain and ran the 10,000m race.

Eleven runners just received a middle school cross country season of top level running advice from a coach who has professional experience and years of coaching experience.

No matter the times at the end of race, hopefully they each learned a little more about themselves, gained some confidence, took steps to living a healthy lifestyle and aquired some running skills that they can use for years to come.