It may not be eight straight Class 4A state cross country championships for the Baldwin High girls cross country team – which is what their boys counterparts have done.

But three out of the last four state championships isn’t that bad, either.

The jockey behind the horse is Mike Spielman, who just completed his 14th year coaching cross country at Baldwin and is the 2005 All-Area Girls Cross Country Coach of the Year.

Spielman said the boys’ streak actually had been part of the driving force behind the girls’ success during the past few years.

“The girls had a little bit different motivation this year. They’d won (state) a couple of years and then last year we got second. With these guys having their streak, the girls had fought so long to get to the state championship,” Spielman said.

Coach of the year ¢ Mike Spielman ¢ Baldwin

“Now they’d won it a couple of years and all of a sudden they were down so they got to hear the guys – all the stuff about the guys. And so they were pretty hungry to do it too and actually, they won really convincingly.”

The outlook for the girls team looks promising for the next few years, as the core of the team returns for 2006, including first-team All-Area selections Kelsey Verhaeghe and Madison Shoemaker.

“We had one senior, and the other senior was an alternate,” Spielman said. “The younger kids did a really nice job of figuring out pretty quickly what they had to do and where they needed to be.

“We’ll probably, definitely have the ‘X’ on our back next year, because we return our top six girls. And like I tell them – every year it’s different. Even though all six girls come back, not necessarily are those all going to make varsity the next year.”