SPRINGFIELD — Being Stephen Kielhofner is a pretty good gig these days.
The Springfield Catholic junior spent the fall as the guy to beat in every regular season race. He took first in meets at Nixa, Monett, Strafford… pretty much anywhere he stepped across the starting line.
He set a course record of 15:45 at the COC Meet and won his district race by well over a minute.
Still, he knew what was waiting for him at the end of this path: his first crack at the Class 3 Championship meet.
“I do think he was one that was maybe more nervous than I was about what he could do,” Springfield Catholic Cross Country Coach Tom Gray said. “Watching him throughout the season, he just got better and better.”
Gray has known Kielhofner since teaching him in fifth grade, though the youngster’s running prowess didn’t start to show flashes until junior high. It was then that Gray knew he could make a quick impact on the varsity program. Kielhofner delivered, capturing the Class 2 individual championship last season and helped the Irish claim their second team state title in program history.
After he had become the second individual champion that Gray had ever coached (first since David Sanholtzer in 1991), the coach was already thinking the sophomore could be the best in school history.
After last weekend, he is sure of it.
“Coming in, I still thought he was the guy to beat. Competition makes him better and it led me to believe that coming in right as a freshman, he would impact our program.”
Kielhofner’s main competition was defending state champion Ben Naeger out of Ste. Genevieve, who posted a time 39 seconds better than the Catholic standout in his race last season.
“I can’t remember another day of the year that I lost sleep thinking about a race, but it just hit me hard before state,” Kielhofner said. “I was just up all night, got an hour and a half of sleep just thinking about competition.”
The junior said he focuses on his breathing to help him stay calm, not to mention plotting his next move in a race. He made it just past the two-mile mark and went on to take the championship by over 12 seconds.
“At the start of the race, it’s just an amazing feeling that this is already what I’m doing again and it’s already up a class.”
Showing the same poise with which he takes interview questions, there wasn’t much of a rah-rah moment after this feat. It was more of a relief.
Even keel Kielhofner.
So how is the back-to-back champion spending his first week of the offseason? Training of course. Collegiate running is in his future and he should have his pick of programs. Not much other than a repeat could suffice in his time left at Catholic, though Gray believes he could springboard himself to some big future possibilities.
“I anticipate the possibility of Stephen breaking the 15-minute mark next year,” Gray said. “That’s getting into word-class, olympic-style athlete.”
Kielhofner has a track season between now and then and kept things more tempered.
“You’ve got to set realistic goals and that’s something I don’t always know how to do,” he said. “You just see where you are and hopefully base it on what you’ve done before.”
If it’s based on that, the rest of the state could be in trouble again.
