Members of IUPUC’s cross-country teams pose prior to a practice beginning at MVP in Columbus. From left are coach Tim Hoeflinger, Dylan Nelis, Brett Kleber, Aidan Ernstes, Peyton Rehlander and Gabby Wallace.
Greg Jones| For The Republic
They’re a hodgepodge of running veterans and running novices with varying athletic backgrounds and degrees of speed and ability.
But together, the four men and two women who make up this year’s IUPUC cross-country team are making history.
The Crimson Pride started an athletics program this year, and men’s and women’s cross-country is the first sport out of the gate. Their first meet is Saturday at the Hanover Invitational.
“A couple of my guy runners have very little experience, so I’m excited to see them grow,” IUPUC coach Tim Hoeflinger said. “Others have quite a bit of background in running, so just to see where we can get them, and the hope is to always improve from where they were in high school or where they were previously. So the challenge of the coach is to maximize their potential.”
Hoeflinger has coached at Central and Northside Middle Schools. He and his wife Kelly, who coached at South Decatur and Shelbyville, both ran at Taylor University.
Shortly after IUPUC decided cross-country would be its first sport, athletics director Zach McClellan contacted Hoeflinger about the coaching position.
“Somebody had given him my name, so he reached out to me, told me that IUPUC was starting athletics this year and asked me if I’d at least be interested in considering it,” Hoeflinger said. “So we talked for awhile and hit it off, had a couple conversations, went in and did an interview and seemed like it would be a really good fit. The more I thought about it, the more I got excited about it, and as they say, the rest is history.”
The runners on the Crimson Pride women’s team come from differing athletic backgrounds.
Audra McNear was born in San Francisco and grew up in Madison, graduating in 1998, but didn’t play sports in high school.
“It’s funny because in my initial conversation with Tim, he asked about my experience as a high school runner,” McNear said. “I said “Tim, I played hooky if I knew we had to run ‘the mile’ in gym class. He laughed, because he thought I was joking.”
McNear, who lives in Columbus, didn’t start running until she was 30. Her mother was nearing the end of an 11-year battle with Huntington’s Disease, a neurodegenerative disease that causes physical, mental and emotional deterioration over several years that generally manifests between the ages of 30 and 40.
“If you have a parent with Huntington’s, you have a 50/50 chance of inheriting the disease,” McNear said. “Given my age at the time, I was terrified. I was having a conversation with my our family neurologist, who is a Huntington’s Disease specialist. I asked her ‘Is there anything I can do to stave off this monster in myself?’ She told me to run and work out, with intensity. So that’s what I did. First, around the block, then a mile. Within a year of that conversation, my uncle and I ran our first marathon, on charity team that we organized with the Huntington’s Disease Society of America and the NYC Road Runners.”
McNear was on the inaugural team of four runners The HDSA has grown to 25 runners every year and is in the top 18 of NYRR charity partners. As a result, hundreds of thousands of dollars have been raised to fund research.
The past four semesters, McNear has been taking prerequisites for IUPUC’s physicians assistant program.
”I was already a student when the announcement was made that they were developing an athletic program,” McNear said. “I jokingly said to my partner, Jase (Robinson), ‘I should try out for the cross-country team.’ He looked at me, dead serious, and said, ‘Absolutely you should.’ I contacted Tim for details, I told him my age, assuming that would be a deal breaker. Long story short, at the age of 42, I’m a collegiate athlete.”
The other women’s runner, Brett Kleber, earned 13 letters at Seymour in cross-country, gymnastics, diving and track and field before graduating in 2019. She ran on two Owls state-qualifying cross-country teams and was a state qualifier as an individual in gymnastics.
After graduation, Kleber ran for Mount Vernon Nazarene in Ohio for two years before returning home and attending IUPUC as a student last year. She has two years of eligibility remaining.
“I hated being four hours away, so I transferred to IUPUC,” Kleber said. “They didn’t have a cross-country team at the time, and then I had reached out to the athletic director (Zach McClellan) and that’s when Tim contacted me about cross-country. I’m just getting back to running. I’ve seen a huge improvement just in practice in times and how I feel. I’m ready to race. I don’t really know what to expect, having not raced for a year-and-a-half. I just hope we can get the team to grow.”
A third women’s student, freshman Gabby Wallace, is serving as manager this season and hopes to join the team next year.
Meanwhile, three of the four boys runners also come from within a half-hour of Columbus. Junior Conner Beatty is from Michigan.
Freshman Aidan Ernstes is the most accomplished of the group, having run on semistate qualifying teams at Jennings County. He also was part of the Panthers’ state-qualifying 4×800-meter relay team in track this spring.
“(Hoeflinger) came up to me and talked to me about it, and I was really interested,” Ernstes said. “Campus is great, the staff is great, so I thought, why not give it a shot.”
Freshman Dylan Nelis ran for Franklin in the latter part of 2010s.
“I had actually applied to IUPUC, and the AD reached out to me and saw I had a background in track and cross-country and wanted to see if I would go out for the team,” Nelis said. “It was something I was really interested in, and now, here we are.”
The fourth runner, freshman Peyton Rehlander, had no running background before graduating from Columbus Christian in May. He played basketball and baseball for the Crusaders last year after moving from Arizona.
“Originally, my intention was to try out for the baseball team, and then I heard they were doing cross-country, and they were accepting anybody,” Rehlander said. “The athletic director said they’re looking for runners and was like, ‘You should give it a shot.’ I hesitated at first, but since I want to be in the military someday and will be doing a lot of running, I decided to give it a shot. So I decided to do something I’ve never done before and to get better at something I’ve really never enjoyed.”
The Crimson Pride started official practice on Aug. 8 and had a team camp Aug. 19-21. The practice mainly at Ceraland, Mill Race Park and on the streets on the north side of town.
“Aside from playing a couple of seasons of parks and rec softball as a child, I’ve never been on a sports team,” McNear said. “So I have no basis for comparison. Having said that, our little team is awesome. Now that fall term is in session, and we’re officially in season, we’re together often, at practice as well as in the classroom. We’re quickly becoming family. I love it.”
Ernstes and Nelis have noticed a difference between their high school training and the training they now are doing at IUPUC.
“It’s been quite a bit different,” Ernstes said. “Workouts are a lot harder. Long runs are a lot tougher, too.”
“I would say it is definitely significantly different — a lot more mileage, a lot harder workouts,” Nelis added. “It’s definitely nice having a small team though, being able to the workouts and stretches and everything together.”
Hoeflinger is looking forward to the Crimson Pride’s inaugural season.
“I have been just thrilled to work with this group of athletes,” Hoeflinger said. “They work hard. I haven’t heard a complaint yet. They seem to really enjoy being together. I love the sense of camaraderie that we already have developed. I’m really excited about what the season has in store. It’s been fun so far, but we haven’t even started racing yet, and that’s when the real fun starts.”
