Doug Berg, Nodaway Valley
(Greenfield) Nodaway Valley has a thinner boys cross country roster compared to past seasons.
Coach Darrell Burmeister says there are five runners on the squad and all of them are juniors and seniors. “We are looking forward to a great year and they’ve stuck with the program since middle school. This is their time.”
Doug Berg (pictured) is among Class 1A’s best runners in the area. “He’s qualified in nine state events between cross country, outdoor track, and indoor track. He was on that state runner-up team as our 5th runner in 2019. Finished 5th at the state indoor meet this last winter in the 3200. His last race was a 4:43 in the 1600. He’s looking at a couple of colleges, he’s a college bound runner.”
Berg has been a two time top twenty finisher at the state meet. Malachi Broers projects as the team’s #2 runner. “Malachi probably put in more miles than anybody this summer. We are looking for big things out of our 1-2.”
The rest of the group could be pretty competitive with one another. “Benjamin Piearson is a senior, Tyler Cooper is a junior, and Jack Jensen is a junior. Any of those three could be interchangeable in the 3-4-5 spot. We have to get those guys under 20:00 as fast as we can and once we do that we are going to be a lot more competitive.”
Burmeister reports camp went great as did the first week of practice. “Camp went really well. I gave them A+’s all days. I don’t always grade practices, but they definitely had A+’s the first week. We put in about 30-40 miles with a little bit less experience runners near 30 and Doug was about 42 miles.”
Wolverine runners compete for the first time on Thursday, September 1st at West Central Valley.
Nodaway Valley coach Darrell Burmeister:
