Taking his distance running more seriously than last fall, senior Will Roberson determined to help the cross country team now and his 800-meter times in the spring

Tom Keegan
Onwardtrojans.com

During a conversation with Will Roberson, Chesterton boys cross country and distance coach Tom Moeller brought up defending Indiana high school 800-meter champion Caleb Winder from Bloomington North as an example of what running 5,000-meter races in the fall can do for a runner who specializes in racing two laps around the track in the spring.
As the fifth man on the Bloomington North’s cross country team, Winder helped his school to win the state title in the fall and the training helped him to win the 800 at in the spring on a team that finished second.
Eager to find ways to improve on the shocking 1:59.9 he ran at the Portage sectional last spring, an improvement of 24.8 seconds from his best time as a sophomore, Roberson is taking cross country more seriously than he did as a junior.
His success in the 800 made Roberson receptive to suggestions such as the one from Moeller to use cross country the way Winder has used it to become a better half-miler.
“In the 800, I feel like a lot of the times I go out too fast in my first lap and I don’t have the endurance to keep going but with the endurance I’m gaining from 5 Ks, I’ll have more in me,” Roberson said. “I think it will also help me get better in the mile.”
Other than Nolan Johnston capping his only year on the track and field team with a 6-foot-11 high jump that placed him second at state, Roberson was as tough an outcome to predict as any others heading into the 2024-25 school year.
“It’s pretty cool to think about it,” Roberson said. “Definitely at the beginning of the season I never saw that happening. I didn’t even think it was even possible. Now I think I have 1:55 in me, at least. I think I can win most of my races and win sectionals and regionals too.”
The two 800 runners who finished ahead of Roberson at sectionals have graduated, as have the four who placed ahead him at regionals.
And like Winder, Roberson is helping his cross country team to do better by running well enough to finish in one of the team’s top five positions, the only ones that count toward the team score, in each of the four meets so far.
Roberson twice has come close to breaking the 17-minute milestone, running a 17:01.5 in the Larry James Invitational at Sunset Hill Farm and 17:01.8 on an easier, flatter course at the Marion Invitational.
After placing 10th at the Larry James and third among Chesterton runners, behind only juniors Ryan Nix and Spencer Martin, Roberson discussed ways he has been taking cross country more seriously this season than last, when he ran it for the first time after getting cut from soccer.
First, he ran more in the summer, especially after returning from a June school trip to Spain for “about a week-and-a-half,” he said.
“The whole month of July I was pretty locked in, and we had cross country camp too, so that helped,” Roberson said. “I take it more seriously outside of practice, the preparation, how much sleep you’re getting at night, what you’re doing the days before the race. For example, last night I didn’t really do very much. I had a good dinner, I went to bed pretty early, so I woke up this morning knowing I could run a good race. If you’re doing everything you can inside practice, what you’re doing outside practice starts to matter more.”
Roberson said that “other than the trip to Spain, I was pretty locked in the whole summer.”
The coolest part of the trip?
“We saw monkeys in Gibraltar,” he said of the country that borders the southern tip of Spain. “The big rock is there, and they had monkeys.”
So far, the best projection for a seven-man postseason varsity lineup has Roberson and fellow 800-meter man William Morgan as the lone seniors. Sophomore Xander Sierazy ,the sixth Chesterton finisher at the most recent meet, the Marion Invitational on the campus of Indiana Wesleyan, is coming on strong. He ran a 17:04.5 last weekend.
The junior class is the deepest on the team and had four runners breaking 17 minutes at Marion, a faster course than any the Trojans will run from here on out.
Spencer Martin ran a 16:08.8, followed by Ryan Nix (16:22.4), Nick Jakel (16:44.5) and Nolan Harrington (16:53.0).
The flat course didn’t play to Nix’s greatest strength, which is his strength, and it was the first time he wasn’t Chesterton’s top finisher and the first meet in which he didn’t finish in the top 10. He finished second at the Rudy Skorupa on Lake Central’s campus the previous week with a 16:06.19, was third at the Larry James (16:11.13) and ninth at the Valley Kickoff (16:49.50) on the state cross country course in the first meet of the season.
An injury limited Martin’s summer training and set him back at the start of the season. He didn’t run at the Valley Kickoff and his time at the Marion Invitational wasn’t as good as last season’s, but if he can stay healthy all season, it gives Chesterton a strong 1-2 punch, in either order with Nix. The five runners pushing each other behind those two to try to become part of the five scorers portends well for the Trojans’ chances of snagging one of the top five spots at regionals needed to advance as a team to the state meet in Terre Haute.