“Bartlett’s Gaining!” was the slogan that the Bartlett High School Boy’s Cross Country Team first coined in 2015. Since then, the team has improved from 21st to fifth, then fourth and now to second in the state.
In fact, Bartlett is now the only team to finish in the top five in the state for the past three years in a row (Boys Large Division 1 schools). Their second-place finish is the best for a Memphis area team since 2008 (Boys Large Division 1 schools). They are also now three-time Region Champions.
“The boys really developed as a team this year,” Coach Bill Gardner said. “You could see Bartlett runners sincerely help each other when the more natural tendency would have been to try to get an upper hand on a fellow teammate. This is the team aspect to cross country that is so elusive, but can become so powerful.”
Teamwork is evident up and down the ranks.
After training together all year, Travis Jones and Robert Dawson both broke the school record for the State 5K course, running 16:35 and 16:46 respectively. Two weeks before that, they both broke the school record for 3200m (the modern-day two mile), running 9:30.48 and 9:30.96.
Rylee Hertter, who ran almost 40 seconds faster this year as the team’s critical fifth man at State, helped standout freshman Landen McNair train to become the third fastest freshman (17:07) at the State Meet.
Mathias Guthrie, whose 1 minute and 30 second improvement contributed to wins throughout the season, helped Andrew Burke achieve an end-of-season breakout performance (17:19), beating almost every team’s fourth man at State. Rounding out the State runners was Jacob Peirce, who came back to running for his senior year and solidified the top seven that competed at State. Bartlett alumnus and standout runner Luke McNair even contributed his time and experiences to help his former team develop.
It is also great to see that the team’s focus on developing other leadership skills (in addition to teamwork) is translating into the classroom, Gardner said. Bartlett student-athletes competing at State have a weighted GPA of 3.97. For an overview of the team and its focus, visit the team’s website, bartlettcrosscountry.com.
In addition to a strong varsity team, Bartlett has a lot of new runners that have joined the team this year. A few of the top freshmen accepting the challenge include Elliot Garst, Ethan Wright, Xavier Pace, Antonio Fleek-Quiros and Rickey Gibson. Each has improved by more than two minutes to break 21 minutes for 5K.
As the team likes to say, “Bartlett’s Gaining!”
