Published: October 29, 2009 12:19 am      

Overway eyes top-25 finish at state meet

He is the first Logan boys runner to reach state since 1992.

Kyle Overway’s banner season culminates with a trip to this weekend’s IHSAA Cross Country State Finals in Terre Haute.

The Logansport junior will be one of nearly 200 competitors who will take to the 5,000-meter LaVern Gibson Championship Cross Country Course at 1 p.m. Saturday.

“I’m just really excited about it. It’s my first state finals,” Overway said. “I’ve got high expectations going in. I’d like to get All-State with a top-25 finish. I’ve been healthy the last week so I think I’ve got a good shot.

“I think it’ll be one of the best state meets of the last couple decades. At least five kids have a good shot of advancing to Nationals. Indiana had three All-Americans last year, and there should be four or five this year.”

Overway advanced to the state finals with a fifth-place finish at last weekend’s New Prairie Semistate. Battling both the flu and cold, wet running conditions, Overway turned in a time of 16:25.3 to advance.

Overway said he’s pretty much over the flu bug that hit him last week.

“I’m probably 95 percent,” he said. “I went kind of into a slump a couple days after the sectional. That was one of my best races ever at the sectional at Logansport, which is a tough course. I didn’t feel up to par at [the regional] at Culver, then I got sick soon after on a Tuesday and that ran to mid-Sunday. Since Sunday I’ve been back to normal and I hope to have a good performance like I did at the sectional.”

Overway, who’s the first Logan boys cross country runner to reach the state finals since Mark Courtad did in 1992, won his first North Central Conference and sectional titles this season. His sectional win in 15:50.9 set the Logan course record. Earlier in a meet at Culver he tied the school record time of 15:50.0 originally set by Courtad in ’92.

One of Overway’s goals on Saturday is to claim the record for himself.

“I’m really just hoping to break 15:50 and get the monkey off my back of getting the school record,” he said. “That’s been a goal since the preseason. If it works out, the weather’s good, the competition’s good and I stay with the pack, I should be able to run a 15:45, 15:50. … It’s really about placing and competing in my first state finals.”

The course in Terra Haute is nationally renowned.

“The course is one of the best in the nation. It’s dedicated solely to cross country,” Overway said. “It’s the same course that is hosting the [NCAA] D-I Nationals for a 10K race.

“The crew can prep the course for anything. I watched the state finals last year when my friend Corey Scott [from Western] ran in it, and it was amazing how many spectators there were. It was pretty crazy; there were people fighting for a spot near the finish line. There were at least a thousand people there. That’s a good environment to run your best.”

Overway also excels academically. He’s ranked first in his class with a 4.717 GPA on a 4.0 scale. He plans to run at the collegiate level.

“I’ve had contacts from LSU, Purdue and coach [Conor] Holt, the University of Tennessee, and academic-wise MIT, where my cousin Alex might be going too. That’d be pretty cool,” Overway said.

As for now Overway is looking for a cool finish to the season at the state finals.