From left: Bozeman cross country runners Nathan Neil, Weston Brown and KJ Popiel run during practice on Tuesday.
From left, Bozeman cross country runners KJ Popiel, Weston Brown and Nathan Neil are photographed during practice on Tuesday afternoon.
From left: Bozeman cross country runners Nathan Neil, Weston Brown and KJ Popiel run during practice on Tuesday.
Bozeman senior cross country runner KJ Popiel is photographed during practice on Tuesday.
Bozeman junior cross country runner Nathan Neil is photographed during practice on Tuesday.
Bozeman senior cross country runner Weston Brown is photographed during practice on Tuesday.
From left: Bozeman cross country runners Nathan Neil, Weston Brown and KJ Popiel run during practice on Tuesday.
From left, Bozeman cross country runners KJ Popiel, Weston Brown and Nathan Neil are photographed during practice on Tuesday afternoon.
From left: Bozeman cross country runners Nathan Neil, Weston Brown and KJ Popiel run during practice on Tuesday.
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Before the season started, Casey Jermyn was hopeful that the Bozeman boys cross country team could go unnoticed for a little while. The Hawks had just one returning runner from last year’s group at state, and they hoped to surprise some people with their newcomers.
Four weeks later, all senior Weston Brown did in his first year on the team was run a school record 5,000 meters time and set the course record for that distance at the Mountain West Invitational.
So much for flying under the radar.
Brown is joined by fellow first-year cross country runner Nathan Neil and senior KJ Popiel — last year’s 11th-place finisher at state — to create a truly formidable top three, making it difficult for the Hawks to lie low.
“There’s a lot of season left,” said Jermyn, the team’s head coach, “but it seems like every week the team gets faster and faster, and I’d like to see that trend line continue up.”
The Hawks’ next chance to test themselves comes Saturday at the Bob Firman Invitational in Boise, Idaho.
Brown and Neil chose to run cross country this season, switching their fall sport from soccer, because of their success in track and field in the spring.
Brown was the AA champion in the 3,200 meters (9 minutes, 27.07 seconds; the fourth-fastest time in school history) and was third in the 1,600 meters (4:21.17; also fourth), while Neil was third in the 800 meters (1:54.52) and fifth in the 1,600 (4:22.54; seventh in school history). Both runners qualified for the Nike Outdoor Nationals, where Neil ran a school-record time of 1:53.69 in the 800.
“I’ve looked into the future a lot. I kind of looked at what I want to do with my life and after the track season this year went really well, I just decided cross country was going to help me in the future the most,” Neil said about the switch from soccer.
Neil has placed second in each of Bozeman’s three races this season. From his first race on Sept. 2 to his most recent on Saturday at Mountain West in Missoula, he has dropped 30 seconds from his time.
Bozeman junior cross country runner Nathan Neil is photographed during practice on Tuesday.
Neil said some of his success stems from being in a running family. His older brother is Connor Neil, a strong runner in his own right (18th-fastest 5k in school history at 16:13.0), who graduated last year. He also has twin siblings Kylee and Taylor, who placed first and third in the girls and boys 1.3-mile middle school races, respectively, at the Mountain West Invitational.
Jermyn, also Bozeman’s distance coach for track in the spring, was confident Brown and Neil could transfer their running skills from the track into cross country. But of the two, Neil was more of a question mark, Jermyn said, because he was specializing in middle distances compared to longer ones.
“He’s definitely proven he has quite the range now,” Jermyn said.
While Neil has placed second in each race, Brown has been the winner each time. Most recently, he placed first at Mountain West — held at the state meet location at the UM Golf Course — in 15:13.3. That time gave him the school record for a 5k, which became the standard length of high school races starting in 2017 after previously being three miles.
“That was super fun to go out and get a course record there,” Brown said. “I really wanted to go to that meet and run as fast as I could. That’s kind of a pre-state meet, so I really wanted to run well there.”
Bozeman senior cross country runner Weston Brown is photographed during practice on Tuesday.
Jermyn recently converted Bozeman’s three-mile record — Chase Equall’s first-place time of 14:40.8 from the 2016 state meet — into a 5k time, and it was still slower than Brown’s mark.
It’s a small sample size, but Brown has already etched his name higher than some of Bozeman’s fastest runners ever: Equall (who went on to run at Washington), Duncan Hamilton (Montana State) and Stirling Marshall-Pryde (Portland State). Neil’s 15:28.1 from Mountain West is the fourth-fastest 5k in school history, trailing only Brown, Hamilton and Equall.
“With running, I think they saw a Division I opportunity,” Jermyn said. “Success plays a factor in that. They were lighting the track up, both of them qualified for Nike Outdoor Nationals and all of a sudden they’re on the biggest stage of outdoor track for high school, and I think that probably played a part in them saying, ‘Hey, we’re pretty good at this.’”
Popiel entered the season with hopes of potentially placing in the top five at the state meet, though he acknowledges that becomes tougher now by having two new teammates who will challenge for the very top.
“They’re both really incredible runners,” Popiel said. “I think they’ve really motivated everyone on the team to really give it their all.”
Popiel’s time of 16:35 at Mountain West gave him 18th place and a new personal record. That time was not only 24 seconds faster than he ran at the same meet last season (when he placed 39th), but it was also two seconds faster than his 11th-place run at state on the same course last year.
“I’m having to work more on strategy this year and not just going out and running hard (because that wasn’t) quite getting me the times I wanted,” Popiel said. “I was pretty happy when I got a new season best at the last meet on Saturday, but I definitely think I can get down more.”
Bozeman senior cross country runner KJ Popiel is photographed during practice on Tuesday.
Jermyn is confident of that also. He thinks all three runners could run sub-16 minutes, which would be tough for any other team to contend with.
Just as Neil and Brown are currently exploring their college running options, Jermyn expects those opportunities to be there for Popiel, too.
“He’s a really, really hard worker, and I think as he gets older and stronger, he’s just one of those guys who gets better every year,” Jermyn said.
The coach added that Popiel runs at his best when the stakes are high.
“He’s a guy that, man, I’m glad he’s on our team. I would hate to see him on any other team,” Jermyn said. “He’s one of those guys at state meets who always has a breakout and other teams are like, ‘Where’s this been all year?’”
Popiel’s experience gives the team a “quiet confidence,” Jermyn said, because “KJ’s been doing this the longest.” That extends to younger runners but also to his two new fast teammates. Neil said he and Brown have relied on Popiel for tips about each new course they see.
“He just knows how everything goes,” Neil said.
Brown said his state championship in track and field has motivated him to keep training and running hard. It helps having a runner like Neil with him every day, he said.
“It’s not matched anywhere else in the state to have me and Nathan training together because we really push each other,” Brown said. “I don’t think anybody else in the state really has that. … I think that’s one of the reasons we both have such great success is that we’re pushing each other so hard when we work out.”
Neil, like his two fastest teammates, is aiming for a high finish next month at the state meet, but he speaks candidly about Brown seemingly being in a tier by himself.
“It doesn’t look like there’s anybody who’s going to stop him right now,” Neil said. “He’s very mentally tough. He can push himself so fast, so much past the boundaries that other people stop at. I’ve noticed that in soccer too, when he would just keep going when other people were stopping.
“And in workouts, I can sometimes run behind him and even get up next to him and then he just runs away from me and he just speeds up. It’s funny, every time I think I’m doing well he’s just at a different level.”
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Parker Cotton can be reached at pcotton@dailychronicle.com or 406-582-2670. Follow him on Twitter @ByParkerCotton.
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