New coach, new attitudes for GLHS cross country

The Gordon Lee Trojans and Lady Trojans will begin their new cross country season at Edwards Park in Dalton on Thursday for the Northwest Whitfield Bruins Invitational and they will do so with a new head coach.

Nathan Burns, who is an assistant with the boys’ basketball program, admits he knew “very little” about the sport when he heard he would be the coach, but he said he’s wasted no time in jumping right in, feet first.

“My son just got into running here very re- cently, so I had a little bit of knowledge (about the sport),” he said. “But as far as training and exercises and things to do, I had to do a lot of research and ask a lot of people that have been here before.”

One of the other things Burns had to do was start recruiting the halls to find athletes to help build the program’s numbers.

“The biggest challenge was us starting school later this year because I didn’t really have access to the student body until just recently,” he explained. “When we first started, we were looking at about 15 kids that had put in work during the summer and were ready to go. Since then, we’ve added about 11 more, so we’re sitting at about 26 right now, which is pretty good considering they had about 10 last year.”

Luckily for Burns, his veterans have stepped up and have virtually become assistant coaches themselves.

“They’ve been a big help, especially with some of the routines they’ve done in the past, like sprint drills and things like that,” he said. “The ones that have been here before have been a big help when it comes to that sort of stuff.”

Four seniors will lead the Navy-andWhite this fall, including 2015 Walker County Dream Team runner Justin Collins. Collins averaged 20:15 last season and had a season-best of 19:15 at the Front Runner Championships.

He’ll be joined by first-year runner Bailey Burns and Jake Leiviska, who also plays football. On the girls’ side, veteran Lennon Lowery will be counted on to provide leadership.

Justin is our leading returning runner,” Burns said. “Bailey will

be a big help in his first year and is probably our No. 3 right now, and Jake will also help us out and he’ll probably be in that top seven, but with him splitting time with football, it might be tricky getting him in here at times.

“Then on the girls’ side, Lennon is a great team leader and she should be one of our top seven too.”

Sophomore Jasper Wilson will be another top runner for the Trojans after averaging 19:45 last year — with a season-best of 19:06 — to make the all-county

team. Burns said he is also counting on some promising freshmen, including Ian Goodwin and Jake Wright.

On the girls’ side, Burns has high hopes for junior Kate Gilliam and incoming freshman Sarah Young, who will likely go into the season as the squad’s top two runners.

“We’ve got some other girls that play also softball and volleyball, so we get them out here when we can,” the coach continued. “Hopefully they can help us out once we get to the area meet.”

With Gordon Lee dropping back to the Class 1A Public School Division this year, Burns is optimistic that

his teams will have great showing at the area and state meets, should they qualify. Gordon Lee will compete in Area 3 that also includes the likes of Trion, Bowdon and defending boys’ state champion Drew Charter School.

“We’d like to win the area meet,” he said. “I know we’ll have some individuals that will place pretty high, but we’d like to go in there and win it as a team. It would be nice to take that and go on to state and be really competitive there. I think we could have some runners that will be really competitive based on previous times.”