At the end of his freshman year, Highland sophomore Lucas Guerra wanted to stay grounded in reality.
“I expected to be in the conversation,” he said. “But I wasn’t going to put myself out there as being a definite winner.”
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But Guerra won the 800 and 1,600 meters at the East Chicago Central Sectional during track season in the spring, capping a freshman year that started with a run to semistate with the cross country team.
Although he may not have expected it, Guerra won the 800 in 2 minutes, 3.74 seconds and the 1,600 in 4:30.10.
Back for his second year of high school, Guerra hopes that strong finish and a busy summer will be part of a continued upward trajectory in cross country.
Running is the main sport in the Guerra family, starting wit Lucas’ father John, who ran at Munster before graduating in 1986. Lucas’ older brother, Austin, was a 2016 Highland graduate who also ran track and cross country before Lucas joined the team in 2017.
The combination of that family lineage and a positive early impression by Highland coach Rob Lukowski is what drove Lucas to the sport.
“I loved what (Lukowski) was doing with all of the other guys on the team,” Guerra said. “It gave me an edge that I didn’t have in any of the other sports I played. And when I saw how much talent there was at Highland, it made me want to pursue this more than any other sport.”
Guerra spent his freshman season behind Isaac Sytsma, a junior that season who was a state qualifier in 2017 but did not return to the team this year.
Still, the Trojans do have the other four runners who combined with Guerra to place 12th at the New Prairie Semistate: juniors Mateo Garcia and Ben Salinas and the senior duo of Matt Roach and Eric Alegre.
That was Highland’s best finish since 2009, and Lukowski thinks this team could place even higher if the runners can ignore the outside noise.
“Last year, we let that consume us,” Lukowski said. “We talked about it too much instead of just focusing on one day at a time. This year, we’ve decided we’re going to ignore of all it.”
Salinas described this narrowed focus as a “one goal mindset” and “taking it one step at a time.” This approach was developed during a bonfire hosted by Lukowski in late May, just after track season ended.
“The overlying theme I kept hearing was we don’t want to get too focused on the end of September or October,” Lukowski said. “We want to focus on today, then tomorrow and then the next day.”
When asked if there was a specific goal in mind for the cross country season, neither Lukowski nor any of the other five returning runners offered a specific target.
“Right now, our focus is our next workout,” Lukowski said. “And I can’t even think about the one after that yet.”
Dave Melton is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.