Lowry High School cross country and track star Will Kracaw will be attending the College of Idaho in the fall.
“I know a lot of guys on the team up there and I have gone and visited," said Kracaw. "When I was staying with their team, I thought that I clicked with them. It was a good fit for me.”
For the fourth-straight year, the College of Idaho placed in the Top-10 at the NAIA National Championships, earning a seventh-place finish in the 8,000-meter event at Seminole Valley Regional Park in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
The Yotes finished with 257 team points — the second team to finish from the Pacific Northwest — finishing with a team time of 25 minutes, 22 seconds, the fastest combined team time at Nationals by a College of Idaho team.
The 2018 season was a banner year for the Coyotes — rising as high as No. 2 in the NAIA Top-25 Coaches' Poll, finishing in the top-three of every regular-season race and winning their first-ever Cascade Conference title.
The Coyotes opened the year with back-to-back second-place finishes — earning the silver at the College of Southern Idaho Invite and the Eastern Oregon Open.
The small school was an attraction for Kracaw.
“The teacher to student ratio is like 20-1, so you can get a lot of one-on-one time with your professors if you are struggling with your classes,” he said. “I plan on running cross country and track. I got a mix of academic and athletic scholarships that will cover a good chunk of the cost of schooling.”
College of Idaho has two more runners from Nevada on its cross country roster, including Spring Creek's Cole Campbell and Pahrmup Valley's Bryce Odegard.
This past fall at the Northern 3A Regional Championships in Reno, Kracaw finished third with a time of 17:32.
Kracaw took 10 seconds off that time at the NIAA 3A State Championships in Boulder City and finished fifth.
Kracaw placed fourth in the 3,200 meters at the 2018 Northern 3A Regional Championships and was sixth in the 1,600 meters. He was also on the 4x800 relay team that finished sixth at state in 2018.
“Will is a super strong hill runner, and he is capable of working out on his own," said LHS cross country coach Kathy Norcutt. "He has not had any competition at Lowry to push him, so his practices have been against the stopwatch. It is difficult to train like that all the time. He is super dedicated and willing to put in the hard work. I am so excited to see him go to the next level, he is ready for it. When he was a freshman he said that he wanted to run in college, so this has been a goal of his for four years. For me to coach and train him to be able to run at the next level is exciting. I think he is totally prepared for it, he is going to be a great “Yote”. I am so proud of Will and I expect good things from him.”
