HOT SPRINGS - Give Eamin Entwisle a little inspiration and a couple juice boxes of orange drink and you've got a state cross-country champion.

Entwisle outdueled a familiar rival, Hill City's Andy Coy, to claim his first Class A boys championship in Huron last Saturday, capping a successful prep cross-country career for the Hot Springs senior.

For that accomplishment, Entwisle has been named the Rapid City Journal's Athlete of the Week.

Coy, a junior, and senior Hudson Koel paced Hill City to its first boys cross-country team title and also helped push Entwisle to greater efforts this season.

It was losing to Coy and having Koel just a few seconds behind last year at the Hot Springs Invitational last year that provided the impetus for Entwisle to train harder in the off-season.

"This was the first summer that I ran, no place special, just around town," Entwisle said.

The homework paid off, with Entwisle claiming medalist honors in his first run of the season at Red Cloud.

But there was that one other ingredient that would prove to be vital, at least in Entwisle's mindset: Hi-C Orange Drink.

"I had a couple of juice boxes before the run at Red Cloud, and I won," Entwisle said. "After that I made sure I always drank two boxes before a race."

Coy and Entwisle met again at the Black Hills Conference meet in Belle Fourche on Oct. 4.

This time it was Coy making his move on Entwisle with 800 meters to go. Coy won by 11 seconds, with Entwisle second.

"He (Eamin) never went with him," said Hot Springs coach J. D. Entwisle, Eamin's dad.

"It was a shock," Eamin said. "Initially, I kind of freaked out, panicked, whatever you want to call it."

J.D.'s response was to pick up the intensity.

"On Monday, we ran a lot of 300's with a minute rest in between," he said.

The loss also set the juice regimen in stone, as far as Eamin was concerned.

"For some reason, I didn't have any before the conference run and I lost that one," he said. "I don't want to take anything away from Andy, because he had a good day."

Entwisle bounced back winning medalist honors at the Region 5 meet with Coy second, and got off to a good start at Saturday's state meet at Huron's Broadland Creek Country Club, where he finished fourth last year.

"I wanted to make it a one- or two-person race, then run away from whoever was left," Entwisle said.

That was Coy again, who trailed Entwisle by about 13 seconds at the finish.

The win marks the second state title for Entwisle, who also claimed the 3,200-meter race at last year's state track meet in Sioux Falls.

"This hasn't really sunk in yet," Entwisle said.

"I'm extremely proud of what he's done," said the elder Entwisle.

"He's done more than I thought he was capable of doing. He's a competitor, always has been and probably always will be."

Entwisle first tried cross-country as a sixth-grader, then played football in seventh-grade. He came back to cross country the next year.

"I don't know what made me change my mind, but I'm glad it did," Eamin said.

Entwisle is undecided on his plans after graduation.

"I'm hoping to run, probably at a local school, and looking at going into education," he said.

A state championship looks pretty good on an athletic resume, but wherever Entwisle winds up, there had better be plenty of that orange drink available.

Entwisle made sure of that at the state meet. "I had ten of those juice boxes with me," he said. "That way I knew there'd be a couple left for me if anybody else got to them."