One Aberdeen Roncalli squad will be experienced, one will be inexperienced, and both will be lead by a new head coach this cross country season.

Casey Steele takes over as the new head coach of the Cavaliers after serving for a year as an assistant. He said the teams will be young, but feature hard-working athletes.

“We have a really nice group of young kids that are working hard,” Steele said.

Steele said because of Roncalli’s youth and inexperience, he doesn’t talk much about long-term goals, instead choosing to focus on the present.

“Right now because we’re so young, we’re just talking about determination, day to day improvement, setting short-term goals, and then we’ll be able to set appropriate long-term goals,” Steele said. “But this early in the season, without racing, and some of these kids don’t even have a race under their belt, it’s hard to do.”

The Cavaliers will be led on the girls’ side by Addison Cassady (who finished 30th at the Class A State Meet last season), Hazel Kannegieter, and Evelyn Martin. The boys will count on leader Matthew Peterson, and then have a younger crew of runners without much experience.

“We’re going to have to count on young kids to fill our varsity spots,” Steele said of the boys’ unit.

Steele said that he tries to make practice interesting and have realistic training goals for each particular runner on the teams. He said it’s beneficial for the mental aspect of the sport.

“Part of it is we have to have some variety to what we’re doing in running. Some days are longer runs, some days are more intense. … setting goals for each practice, what we expect, what we think they can achieve,” Steele said. “Being fair to everyone doesn’t mean that we’re going to run the exact same distance for everyone, either. So kids who are just new to this, we set their distance or their times at a certain standard, and those kids we mentioned earlier, we have goal workouts and those are more intense and higher expectations for them.”

Because no two cross country courses are alike, it can be a bit of a challenge when it comes to measuring success. Steele said he tries to break the races down into shorter intervals.

“You can tell by what someone hits at their first mile split, their second mile split, and how they’re doing, are they running consistently from mile to mile. The key to running a fast 5K is to run even splits throughout the race,” Steele said. “When people go out too fast they struggle in the middle and then they finish too fast, and they don’t run ultimately what they’re capable of running. Learning how to run consistently in practice, that translates to running consistently in races.”

Steele spent 35 years coaching in Wyoming before returning to Roncalli last year. He said he enjoys coaching at a private school where he has the freedom to talk about the faith aspect of sports.

“One of the neatest things about being in the public schools for all my years, I always looked at coaching as ministry anyway, but you have some restrictions as a public schools person on how you share your faith,” Steele said, “but being here it’s integral to every day in practice right now, our faith in what we do, our integrity. We offer up our joys, our works, our struggles, every day when we come here to a Roncalli practice.”

The Cavaliers open their season on Thursday at a meet in Redfield.

Steele is looking forward to working with the runners this fall. He said he feels the need to prove himself as he takes over the helm of the program.

“I’ve had a lot of fun over the years, a lot of different types of kids, a lot of different success, and it’s kind of neat coming here where, sure some of the old folks know who I am, and no one knows who I am,” Steele said. “I’ve got to prove myself to the kids and families based on what they experience, not what I’ve done over the last 35 years.”