The Owensboro Catholic Aces grabbed a top-20 finish Saturday at the KHSAA Class 1A State Cross Country Meet Saturday at Bourbon County.
Holy Cross cruised to victory in the team portion as the Cougars had three of the top four runners, including state champion Josh Meiman as he finished the race with a time of 16:16.95.
Aces coach Scott Lowe said he was glad to be able to see his team compete this season.
“I’m just happy to be here,” he said. “With COVID and everything else, we didn’t know for sure if we were going to have a season. Graduating a ton of seniors in the last two years, I’m happy we can field a team to get here and just compete. Proud of the guys, very happy. Can’t say about them and how hard they worked all year.”
For Catholic, several of their runners play multiple sports, which is something Lowe advocated for awhile ago when he started at OC.
“I kind of started it 20 years ago when I first started coaching Catholic,” he said. “There were some soccer players that wanted to do both and the soccer coach at that time and myself, we were okay with it. There was one year, our best runner was actually a soccer player.
“A small school, we’ve got to share athletes. The camaraderie is there because if they start running for me and doing soccer when they’re younger, they know who’s on the cross country team so there’s a camaraderie there that carries on through. It’s just been successful for both of us.”
Catholic’s Joe Fusco led local runners in the race as he finished 33rd overall with a time of 18:20.34. Trinity’s Jacob Howard was the lone local non-Catholic runner at state, and he finished in 136th with a time of 20:11.76.
Fusco is in his second year as a member of the team and said Lowe talked to him about running during his junior season.
Fusco was the No. 2 runner for the Aces last season and with that, he knew he had to continue.
“That kind of made me have to come out this year again as seniors because there’s a great group of guys out there,” he said. “I’m really glad to be with them.”
Fusco just finished his soccer team a couple of weeks ago and said when he runs in races, it’s not something he gets too worried about.
“I really wasn’t very nervous just because this isn’t my main sport,” he said. “I’m just out here to have fun. This was a weird race because we were in waves. I didn’t really know who all was out there, who all I was passing … It really didn’t give me a good sense of where I was during the race so that was difficult and it was a different course than last year. Other than that, my nerves, they weren’t really through the roof. It was easy going.”
Austin Martin finished 95th for the Aces while Luke Payne grabbed 106th.
Payne will letter in three sports this fall for the Aces.
“To come out and compete in soccer, cross country and kick for football, it’s pretty amazing,” Lowe said.
This is Payne’s first year running and like Fusco, a Catholic coach convinced him to run.
“Whenever COVID happened, I used to go out to the soccer fields or lift weights but I couldn’t because all of it got shutdown so I’d just run a lot,” he said. “I was in pretty good shape and our track coach (Coach Ivey) came out one day and told me I should run cross country … The more I ran, the more I thought about it and that’s what I wanted to do.”
Payne, a senior, said his final year at OC has been a little hectic with three sports as he’ll also run track and he’s planning on swimming this year as well.
“It’s been pretty busy,” he said. “Last year I was playing football and soccer so I kind of got used to that. Then picking up cross country, it was kind of difficult but after soccer was over, I was able to be more ready.”
For Payne, being a multi-sport athlete adds to his fuel.
“It’s a little crazy but I’m a competitive athlete,” he said. “I like the thrill of competition. That’s just my drive to play sports.”
Fusco and many at Owensboro Catholic were dealt a blow during the summer when friend Logan Davis died in a car accident.
Fusco said it changed his mindset going into his senior year.
“It gave me a whole different outlook on life,” he said. “There’s no point in being so serious in your life. Whether that be politics or school or sports, you’ve just got to realize there’s a whole other world out there for you to live and enjoy. Nobody did that better than Logan. That made me change how I think of things.
“Of course, I miss him. My whole friend group is wounded. We’re a whole lot lighter without him but we’re really thankful to have known him and have him be in our lives and show us what it looks like to be a servant of God.”
Scores
Team
1. Holy Cross 61
2. St. Henry 83
3. Beechwood 158
18. Catholic 504
Individual
1. Josh Meiman (Holy Cross) 16:16.95
2. DK Schnieders (Holy Cross) 16:36.83
3. Connor Hayes (Lexington Christian) 16:43.09
33. Joe Fusco (Catholic) 18:20.34
95. Austin Martin (Catholic) 19:30.20
106. Luke Payne (Catholic) 19:40.66
132. Braden Davis (Catholic) 20:08.32
136. Jacob Howard (Trinity) 20:11.76
218. Reece Peach (Catholic) 23:13.15
220. Clay Thompson (Catholic) 23:15.88
227. Kyle Joiner (Catholic) 23:35.69
