Several area cross country teams ran at the Iowa Mennonite School Invitational Monday night at the Wellman Golf Course. On the girls side Mid-Prairie posted the best area team finish, even without their second best runner Hannah Van Roekel the Golden Hawks placed fourth as a group with their score of 152 points. Williamsburg won the girls event with 49 points. Mid-Prairie was led by top area finisher Abby Tornow in sixth overall with a time of 16:36. She spoke after the race about her run.
“It’s just mentally going up through all of these hills and the battle of just pushing through it,” Tornow said.
Other Mid-Prairie girls finishers included Maddie Zahradnek in 30th with a time of 17:38, Beth Chmelar in 34th at 17:54, Calli Shaw in 41st at 18:14, Greta Schmidt in 45th at 18:33, Grace Chmelar in 62nd at 19:58 and Jordan Murray in 91st at 27:28.
The Washington Demons placed ninth in the fourteen team field with a score of 237. The Demon girls were led by Emme Keith in 18:57.
The IMS girls were 13th with a team score of 334. IMS was led by Rene Buckwalter’s 20th place finish in a time of 17:12. Other IMS finishers included Michaela Gingerich in 70th with a time of 20:28, Katya Doroshenko in 88th with a time of 24:40, Nani Qimatshoeva in 90th finishing in 25:17 and Anna Rossokhina in 92nd with a time of 29:55. Lone Tree also participated on the girls side with a seventh place team score of 214.
On the boys side the Golden Hawks were again the top area team finishing runners up with a team score of 71. Vinton-Shellsburg was the boys meet champion with 63 points. Mid-Prairie was led by Jared Draper’s fifth place finish and time of 17:40. After the race Draper talked about the course and the key to running at Wellman.
“[It] was a lot more sentimental, for a lot of these seniors, this is the last time running on this course, and we got a lot more prepared and pumped, and we knew we had to [run] had today, because this is the last day before they make teams for the state qualifying meet, and we knew that this is the decider for our district and we had to pull out everything we had, so I think that was the difference,” Draper said.
Other Mid-Prairie finishers included Ryan Errthum in seventh at 17:46, Ty Feigenspan in 12th at 17:59, Cade Miller in 21st at 18:19, Zeb Schwartz in 26 at 18:36, Jonah Van Roekel in 27th at 18:38 and Andrew Schwartz in 35th at 19:00. Following the meet Golden Hawk Head Coach Mark Hostetler talked about his team’s performance and beating Clear Creek Amana.
“Our seventh runner, beat Clear Creeks fifth runner, and anytime you can do that you know that you are going to do pretty well,” Hostetler said. “We beat Williamsburg by eight points, so out of 20 schools we ended up second, and there are some thing that I think we can improve, but overall it was the best race of the year, and last week was the best race before this, so we are doing well right now and hopefully we can keep it up for the rest of the year.”
The Demon boys took eighth in the 12 team field. Washington was led by Austin Latchem.
Following the meet Head Coach Steve Roth talked about his team’s night
“I thought we competed very well, after homecoming week and it being a Monday our expectations were a little low because we have eight or nine days before our next meet. Good competition, but I was really happy with the way they competed and some of the times are very favorable for us,” Roth said.
The IMS boys finished in 12th place as a team at their home invite. Iowa Mennonite was led by Kirby Shetler in 28th with his time of 18:39. Other IMS finishers included Noah Bruns in 63rd at 21:17, Payton Miller in 64th at 21:20, Kobi Russom in 84th at 23:20 and Jim Wang in 91st at 26:36. Head Coach Marty Gingerich talked about his team run at their final home meet of the season.
“The girls all did really well, Renee took about 45 seconds off of her time here two weeks ago, Michaela who didn’t run here two weeks ago but ran a really good time, we’ll check when we get home but may have been an all-time best, the others all ran well as well, it was a good night for the girl’s side,” Gingerich said. “Kirby didn’t have quite as good of a night as he had been having, Noah and Payton took about a minute off their time from two weeks ago on this course, Rex had a bad night and wasn’t able to finish, and Kobi ran well and Jim ran well, I would say overall it was a good night.”
Mid-Prairie is next in action Saturday at the North Linn invitational, Washington is off until the 17th for their conference meet at Keokuk and IMS will travel to Winfield-Mt. Union for the Southeast Iowa Superconference Meet Thursday.