Brooke-lyn Forman and Garrett Hopke were both new faces for Van-Far heading into this season.

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There’s more than meets the eye, though, as Forman is a senior who transferred in last year and has qualified for state cross country twice before and Hopke is a freshman who has competed at the state junior high meet. They will both be representing Van-Far in the Class 2 state meet, starting at 11:15 a.m. Friday, after finishing in the top 30 of their respective races on Saturday at the Class 2 District 3 meet at South Callaway in Mokane. This will be the first time Van-Far has sent a girl and boy to the same state meet in program history.

Head coach Kris Cross remembers taking boys and girls to state, but taking at least one of each is sure to be exciting. She had good first impressions of both runners, despite Forman dealing with a stress fracture that limited her maximum distance to make her exclusive to track and field in her junior year. Prior to that, Forman had been to state three times with Farmington — once as a freshman alternate and the other two years after qualifying individually — and then qualified a third time by finishing seventh out of 88 girls with a time of 22:34.

“She goes after it and gives everything she has,” Cross said. “She has always been in the top five runners in every meet we’ve been to. There was a good chance she was making it to state.”

Forman had to recover before her return but proved she didn’t lose much as Van-Far’s best runner.

“She could only run two miles three times a week in the second week of track season (junior year),” Cross said. “I didn’t really see her race-race until this fall.”

Cross said Hopke’s talent was evident before reaching high school when he finished in the top 12 at the junior high state meet last year. Hopke wasn’t too far off from that placing among the 112 high schoolers in the Class 2 boys 5,000 meters as he finished 17th with a time of 18:49.

Admittedly, Cross said she wasn’t sure if Hopke would be good enough for state this year since he is a freshman and would only become stronger as he grew older. Hopke in his current state this year has been “well beyond” expectations as he is less than a minute off from the school record.

“He’s one of those kids that has talent and works his rear end off,” Cross said. “Even in practice, he’s a workhorse. I took him down to the state junior high championship they have down south, so I knew coming into this year, with the work ethic he had, that he was going to have a really good year.”