Fahey Bank Athlete of the Month: Harding's Kade Sutherland enjoys breakthrough season
MARION — Kade Sutherland has always liked the cross country course at North Union and has always enjoyed the annual invitational the Wildcats host each fall.
The Marion Harding junior now loves it because that's the place where all the training and all the psychological elements of running came together.
"I kept going and once I saw the time at the end, I couldn’t believe it," Sutherland said. "There were so many emotions going through and I was so happy."
The North Union Invitational was his breakthrough moment, finishing third in a personal best time of 16:38, but Harding coach Bob Peters thinks it happened a few races before the meet in Richwood.
The Presidents traveled to Columbus Northland for a small invitational. It's a race Peters enjoys because it gives his runners a chance to compete for medals and gain confidence.
"He came out and actually won it," Peters said of Sutherland. "I think that was huge for him because until that moment he was always a follower. He wanted to run with Billy from this team because I know I can run with him and that’s what he did.
"We go to Northland and there’s no guy that stands out there. You’re going to have to do something and take a lead. He actually did when the gun went off. He took off with a mission. He left everybody in the dust, and he did pretty good. It was exciting to see him run on his own and not with a person he knows he can run with. That changed the rest of the year."
To start the season, Sutherland was running in the high 17-minute range at meets in Fremont and Wapakoneta. He took second at a small invitational at Fairbanks, clocking a 17:20, but turned in a 17:42 for 15th place in the Division I boys race at the Galion Cross Country Festival.
"For me, I feel like now whenever I go out to run, I always remember that I put in that work," Sutherland said. "It might not show in that moment right there, but over time it’s going to start to work and start to see results. It starts to click like that."
He was eighth at the Bill Brown Invitational in Ontario, a much slower course than Galion, but he timed a 17:20, which was 22 seconds better than the week before. He was 16th at Fredericktown's Kokosing Dam with a 17:03, a course generally considered fast.
And then there was the third-place run at North Union when he not only broke 17 minutes, he crushed the mark.
"He got to follow Payne (Ratliff, a regional qualifier who graduated from Harding) a little bit last year and learn a lot there," Peters said. "He grew a lot this year as far as maturity. He got into lifting to help out his strength. Of course, he put in some good miles this summer. That was the huge success that he had this year."
Sutherland said he learned a lot while training with Ratliff, especially how the now Otterbein freshman runner went about his offseason workouts. Sutherland followed suit, running up to 55 miles a week and sometimes doing two-a-day jogs in the summer.
"His work ethic as a freshman had him running in the 19s. With how much he works, I figured by his senior year he would be in the 16s. I didn’t see that it was going to happen already," Peters said. "I think it shows how much work he’s done already, and it gives you that excitement for next year now."
The running joke all season between runner and coach was about earning an invitation to the Mid Ohio Athletic Conference's annual fall sports banquet at All Occasions in Waldo by making first-team all-conference.
"He would ask if I thought he could get top seven, and I would say, ‘Yeah, I want a dinner!’ As we started getting along and his times started coming down, it wasn’t a joke anymore," Peters said. "I was like, 'You’re a top seven runner in this conference, and you can do this.'"
A week after running a 16:58 at the homestanding Marion Harding Invitational, Sutherland put down another 16:58 at Galion's Ammans Reservoir Park to finish fifth, shaving 44 seconds off his time on the same course a month earlier.
"Coach Bob was telling me to try to run with this pack right here because their times have been around (the top)," Sutherland said. "At the beginning of the race, I was a little bit back of them, but after the mile, I started picking it up and passing some people and got into that top five."
The coach and runner earned their meal.
They were also close to earning a regional berth until an unfortunate incident knocked Sutherland out of the Division I district race in Hilliard.
Sutherland was within the group that would advance to the Pickerington regional at the mile marker, but at the halfway point in the race, he encountered a pack of runners in a tight turn, got tangled up and went down, injuring his ankle. He tried to continue, but couldn't finish the race.
"It was so frustrating because … I felt like I was there. To be able to pass that and go farther would have been awesome," Sutherland said of the district result.
The disappointment is salved by the fact that he was named Fahey Bank Athlete of the Month for November among Marion County boys.
"It means everything," he said of the Fahey Bank Award. "I worked really hard all summer to be able to get there. Everything started working and I was really proud of myself. It definitely was (a surprise) because I didn’t know that I was up there for it or how it all worked. I was really surprised by it."
Now he's going to take the successes and failures and let those fuel him into the spring track season and next year's cross country effort.
"I really have that with me to think about," he said. "I don’t want to end up like that ( at districts) after all that hard work. In that moment, I’m trying to use that in whatever I’m doing to get past it."
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Fahey Bank Athlete of the Month
Boys November Nominees
Winner: Kade Sutherland, junior, Marion Harding cross country.
Landon Murphy, junior, Ridgedale football.
Cadence Varner, senior, Pleasant football.
Ethan Marshall, senior, Elgin cross country.
Chase Osborne, junior, River Valley cross country.
This article originally appeared on Marion Star: Fahey Bank Award: Harding's Kade Sutherland enjoys breakthrough season
