With the South Dakota high school track and field season wrapping up three weeks ago at Howard Wood Stadium, the focus shifts to the upcoming cross country season in the fall. For the Aberdeen Christian program, the upcoming season combines the talent of rising stars in the Class B ranks with a young, energetic and passionate new head coach, Livia Inches.

Inches graduated from Northern State last month with a bachelor’s degree in Art Education, a TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) certificate and a cross country and track coaching endorsement. A native of Pipestone, Minn., Inches came to Northern State mainly for cross country and track and field, and she competed for the Wolves from 2017 to 2021.

In the fall of 2021, Inches did her student-teaching at ACS where she worked with students from preschool through 12th grade in the art room. During that time, Inches formed connections with the school and the cross country team.

“I got to know the principal and everybody and I would run with the cross country team sometimes just for fun and would talk to the kids about their races,” Inches said. “Eric Kline knew that I was an athlete at Northern and that I was studying for my certificate in cross country coaching, so when Noah Aderhold stepped down, he asked me.”

As a first-time coach, Inches is still ironing out her coaching philosophy, but she knows how she wants to build the foundations for her program. Her coaching philosophy isolates three of the most important aspects of any distance running training program: summer training, in-season workouts and race preparation.

“I really want to build a good base of mileage for the athletes this summer,” said Inches. “Obviously, I can only have so much control over what they do during the summer, but I want to make it possible for them to have a really solid base.”

The purpose of summer training is not to burn out runners with intense workouts, but instead to slowly build their aerobic capacity to put themselves in a position to handle intense anaerobic workouts and the vigor of a cross country 5k race.

Secondly, Inches wants to prioritize injury prevention during the season by giving athletes time to recover in between difficult workouts.

“My main thing for the season is we want to go hard on the hard days and take the easy days easy,” Inches said. “We want to focus on injury prevention by incorporating some strength training with taking the easy days easy while also getting faster and pushing ourselves more on the hard days so we have that balance there.”

Outside of practice, Inches plans to be analytical in finding her athletes’ potential for future races. This involves breaking down an athlete’s fitness based on recent workouts and looking back at past race performances to try and predict a runner’s potential.

“It’s fun to see the potential in athletes and say ‘Hey, you could really put down a good 5k because your two-mile time in this race in track last year was really good.’ ”

The 2022 Aberdeen Christian cross country team holds a lot of potential, especially on the girls’ side. The Knights return the decorated trio of Rachel Beaner, Grace Steger and Katie Steger. The trio led ACS to a third-place finish at the Class B State Cross Country championships last October as they all placed in the top-23 with only a 21-second spread between the first and third finisher.

Furthermore, the trio tacked on more state accolades three weeks ago at the Class B State Track and Field Meet. Beaner, Grace Steger and Katie Steger all recorded personal bests in the 3,200-meter run and placed 12th, 14th and 15th, respectively.

Inches finds herself in a position where she could lead a team to a high finish in the state in only her first year at the helm. However, regardless of outcome, Inches will always seek to encourage and be a role model for her athletes.

Considering the fact that she has wanted to be a cross country coach since early in her high school running career, Inches could not be more grateful to everyone that helped make this opportunity possible.

“In the same way that I am thankful for the Aberdeen community and Aberdeen Christian, I am also thankful to God for giving me this opportunity,” she said. “I know that He is the one who gave me the ability to run and the desire to coach, so I want to use this for His glory.”