For the first time in 21 years, the Dimond Lynx have taken the state title for boy’s Cross Country Running.

Held at Bartlett High School on Sept. 22, this was the first time the Dimond boy’s cross country team had won since their head coach and now Dimond Math teacher, Nate Normandin, was on the winning team in 1997—creating a historic day for Dimond High School’s cross country running team.

Dimond had five of their team members finish within the top 13, and the entire team finish within the top 30.

Santiago Prosser placed 2nd, Niko Latva-Kiskola 6th, Fred Rygh 10th, George Cvancara 11th, Dallin Gardiner 13th, Noah Hoefer 22nd and Cameron Sheldon 30th.

For Latva-Kiskola, Rygh, Cvancara and Sheldon, this was their final year racing for Dimond’s cross country team.

Rygh, Cvancara and Hoefer are all swimmers as well, meaning that they practiced for both cross country running and swimming at the same time over the course of the past few months. Due to the demanding swim practice schedule, Normandin had to hold two varsity practices a day to allow for the swimmers to be able to practice for both sports.

To Rygh, though, this resulted in a positive experience.

“I like [having two practices], you get to work out a lot and it’s nice to stay in shape,” Rygh said.

Many new team members, as well as the swimmers, were recruited by team captain Cameron Sheldon, forming one of Dimond’s strongest cross country running teams in over two decades.

Winning State was a dream come true for the team, as well as Normandin.

Normandin said, “It was phenomenal. It’s been a really long time since Dimond won a cross country championship, so it was really neat for the guys to pull it off again. They pulled together at the right time, they had a good race. I think it was, for them, pretty emotional.”

Rygh said, “It was super exciting with everybody being there, especially with the excitement of winning. Then going up and being top 10 was super cool for me personally. To have Norm there as a part of the last team that won state, but also as our head coach now, was an amazing experience—it was really awesome.

“And it was fun; I got done with the 5k and I was exhausted, but then I turned around and saw that we had won and had zero fatigue, I just got super excited.”

At the end of the race, and towards the final ceremonies, it was clear that emotions were high among the team.

“They were pretty excited and it was hard to say ‘Hey guys calm down a little bit, you’re a little too exaggerated with your emotion,’ but it was good. They had a lot of celebration and some are still talking smack,” joked Normandin.

After a season of working hard, winning State was the reward that the Lynx deserved.

Senior Jalyn Osborne attended the championships and said, “I watched the state race and it was amazing to see how well all the boys did. I was so proud of all of them, and the looks of the faces on the runners and coaches made me proud to be a Dimond lynx.”

The boys’  long season of hard work and dedication clearly paid off in their final race, gaining Dimond’s first state title of the year, and the cross country running team’s first state title in over 20 years.

The Dimond girls cross country running team did not finish in the top 10 winning teams, but did have Senior Kylie Judd finish 13th and Junior Mary Reinbold finish 28th.