‘Who’s this Lane Hubbard?’: Pleasant Hill senior making name for himself, Wolves’ cross country program

PLEASANT HILL, Ill. — Lane Hubbard doesn’t let the questions bother him.

They fuel him.

“A lot of times I hear people say, ‘Who’s Pleasant Hill? What’s the Wolves?’” said Hubbard, a senior runner on the Pleasant Hill cross country team. “Then I’m like, ‘I’m gonna show them.’”

Wolves coach Pamela Roach hears the skeptics, too.

“We’ll walk by other coaches and other kids, and they’ll be like, ‘Who’s this Lane Hubbard?’” Roach said. 

Roach watches with delight as those answers unfold.

“We’ve been at some meets where they’re like, ‘Man, we’re going to lose to Lane Hubbard,’” Roach said.

Much of this quizzicality stems from the fact Pleasant Hill is relatively new to the cross country scene. Hubbard and former coach Gina Rylander worked together to start the Wolves cross country program in 2022.

“(Rylander) had always been a cross country coach,” Hubbard said. “She had worked at Pittsfield, and when she came to Pleasant Hill, she talked to me about (starting a cross country program) because I did track. We just talked about it and said let’s do it. So she started it up, and here we are.”

That fall, the team consisted of just Hubbard and Peyton Lawson. The Wolves added freshman Louis Barnes into the fold in 2023, and now, Hubbard and Barnes make up the boys team while sophomore Hailey Harrison represents the girls team. The program also has two junior high runners — seventh graders Jake Wombles and Carson Kinscherff.

Roach previously coached track before taking the reins of the cross country program in 2023 when Rylander left for Griggsville-Perry. Roach said taking over a program in its infancy was a bit of a whirlwind, but helping Hubbard and the others pave the way for future runners has been rewarding.

“It’s a great feeling,” Roach said. “And it’s an even better feeling when we show up to these meets as a small school and bring it, leave it on the line and represent.”

Hubbard has represented Pleasant Hill even better than he anticipated. This season, he has posted 10 top-10 finishes in 12 meets. Two days after a seventh place finish at the Quincy Notre Dame’s Running Raider Classic on Sept. 17, Hubbard won the St. John’s Invitational in Carrollton. He followed that with a second-place showing at the Toby Elledge Invitational on Sept. 24 and a sixth-place finish at the Tom Oakley Invitational on Oct. 5.

“When I first started, I didn’t think I would be very good,” Hubbard said. “I was just kind of doing it for track.”

Hubbard’s success hasn’t been limited to the cross country course. He has added multiple state appearances to his track and field resume since first participating in eighth grade. That season, Hubbard qualified for state in the 1,600-meter run and as part of the 4×100 relay. Last spring, Hubbard qualified for the Class 1A state track and field championships in the 3,200 meters.

Hubbard said he does much of the same training for track as he does for cross country, a significant portion of which involves running hills.

“Even though the track is flat, I like to run hills, get my speed up like towards the end of the race, kick it in,” Hubbard said. 

Pleasant Hill’s terrain provides a more than suitable training ground.

“We have a lot of hills, some really steep hills, so that’s a big help,” Hubbard said. “A lot of times when we go to other meets, we notice there aren’t many hills in the town. It kind of makes me think, ‘Well, shoot, I have an advantage because I’ve been running taller hills.”

While Hubbard’s training regiment doesn’t change much from track season in the spring to cross country in the fall, cross country season is made significantly more difficult by his soybean allergy that kicks into high gear when the beans are harvested.

“I get really stuffy and my nose gets runny, but the main thing is it gets in my lungs and it makes it hard to breathe,” Hubbard said “It just clogs me up. It’s not fun.”

Hubbard stays prepared.

“I use my inhaler, I take allergy medicine, try to cough it up as best I can to get it out of my system,” Hubbard said.

As prepared as Hubbard may be, sometimes he can’t avoid the havoc bean dust wrecks on his lungs.

“On our way to meets, we’ll be driving down the highway, soybean dust will come into the van, and he’ll be like, ‘Oh, God, I’m gonna die,’ and covering his mouth because he knows it’s going to affect him,” Roach said.

Some places affect him more than others.

“Quincy isn’t so bad. Liberty’s course is literally in a bean field — beans or corn depending on the year — so that one’s pretty tough,” Hubbard said.

But no matter where Hubbard goes, he has made a name for himself, and Roach fully expects that to continue all the way to the state meet Nov. 9 at Detweiller Park in Peoria.

“I think we can do it,” Roach said. “I’m pretty confident, like probably 100 percent confident.”