After a disappointing end to the season last year the York Dukes men’s cross country team will look to make a big improvement. The Duke who held a streak of 50+ straight state championship appearances had their streak fall after a disappointing Regional Championship race. Coach Charlie Kern who coached at York for 12 years behind legend Joe Newton and recently took over as head coach during the last 5. During his head coaching tenure he has led the Dukes to multiple state appearances with a couple of podium finishes and is primed to lead the Dukes back to the state meet. Lots of weight is on the dukes as they are the hallmark of Dukes Athletics with award after award, trophy after trophy, medal after medal all showing the pride and success of the York Dukes Cross Country Team.
“We want kids to be the best that they can be, we want kids who are willing to put in work, and we want to be working together to achieve that,” Kern said. “If you want our goal it’s to get back to the state meet”
Coach Kern sounds ready to get these Dukes back to the promise land. Last year the seniors were a lot of Track Stars instead of Cross Country stars
“That Senior Group was half milers not full distance runners, they did the best that they could, they just weren’t really Cross Country runners”
Kern referring to 4 of the top 7 senior cross country runners competed in sectional with two eventually qualifying for state in the 1600 meter event and the 800 meter event respectfully, both well under the 5 kilometer threshold of a cross country race. With some fresh new faces from Varsity Kern really feels the runners have a lot of promise stating
“We won at Palatine, we won at Peoria Notre Dame, we won at Gary goss at the sophomore level and those are big meets.”
Referring back to last year as the current York Junior runners dominated the completion last year and have only gotten better. The Dukes sadly lost two coaches to retirement last year and need some new faces. One of these new faces was coach Patrick Sheridan who has been coaching for 18 years 16 of those coming as a head coach for Elmwood Park High School as their head cross country coach.
“It’s really great to help the younger runner, the newer runners and the Freshman class improve. These kids are the future of York and I will help improve them as much as I can.”
After the departure of coach Matt Mimlitz to retirement coach Kern needed a new freshman mentor and he looks to have found the perfect match. Coach Sheridan-as an experienced coach-has a higher knowledge of ways to help a runner.
“I’m here if they need help with injuries, motivation, mental attitude, knowledge, strength, mobility, injury prevention. I just try to find what’s unique with each kid and what they need.”
After losing someone who has been coaching for a long time and specifically at York for almost 10 years it was a great move to find someone with experience like Coach Patrick Sheridan. Compared to the younger kids Only the Juniors and Seniors have witnessed what state is like, no one had a better experience at state than Senior Varsity runner Iain Davies. In 2021 during the last State appearance for York Iain was a top 14 Alternate Runner for the top 7 State runners. Davies has seen what it is like at the top and wants nothing more than to get back.
“The goal for this year is definitely to qualify for state with me finally being apart of that top 7”
Davies has been working all year the past two seasons to achieve his peak performance
“I personally would like to run under 15:30 in 3 miles this year as well”
Running a mile in five minutes and ten seconds is hard in and of itself but repeating that for three miles is a whole other monster. This just gives you a peak into that talent this York Dukes team has developed over the years and they all look ready to get back to the State Meet.
Will this be enough, Will they fall short, Will they place near the top? The way the dukes are running they don’t look like they have failure in their vocabulary.
