2019 Hill and Bale Invitational

Full Results - https://www.athletic.net/CrossCountry/meet/156500/results

A great day for racing. 

I would like to start by thanking all the volunteers who gave their time to help make the event a success.  Thank you to the Maintenance staff for making the course look great.

Girls Varsity

 -  After losing a large portion of the team to graduation last year we had some questions as to where we would stack up.  In our first race of the year girls answers some of those questions.  They ran great to win the meet on a tie-breaker (best 6^th runner) with Whitehall.  The started at an intelligent pace.  They then moved up throughout the race.  Taylor Mater (So) did a great job hunting down the leaders in the 2^nd mile and then running away from them to win.  Leah Convers (Jr) also moved up well to be our 2^nd finisher.  We saw nice pack running from Morgan Best (Fr), Taava Johnson (So), and Erin Norton (Jr) as they moved up through the field as a group.  Annika Tuls (Sr) chased that group and finished strong to give us 6 runners in the top 15, and to seal our win as she beat Whitehall’s 6^th runner by 12 places.  Alyssa Gustman (Sr) had a solid showing as our 7^th runner, running over a minute faster than she did last year.

Boys Varsity

• The boys had a dominate showing placing 4 in the top 5, 6 in the top 10 , and all 7 in the top 15.  Nathan Walker (Jr) lead the way from start to finish in a course record 16:19.  Conor Somers (So), Josh Zerfas (Jr), and Ben Paige (Jr) worked well together for the first half of the race.  Adam Ward (Jr) battled hard to give us a sweep of the top 5 places but faded just a little over the last 800 to come in 6^th.  Gavin Orcutt (Sr) started his senior year off with a bang running over a minute faster than he did last year.  Seven LaRoue (Sr) moved up well to round out the placing for us finishing 12^th.  This was a good start for the boy as they were eager for a race after a summer of training.

Girls JV

• We had 3 athletes in the girls race, all pretty new to XC running.  1^st time runner Lauren Boerger (Sr) led the way for the Pack, battling with 2 Whitehall runners for the win.  Lauren couldn’t quite hang on over the last mile, but showed promise with her willingness to mix it up with the leaders.  Her finish time was fast enough to move her into our top 7.  Mia Witte (So) and Mackenzie Boyd (Fr) had good 1^st races to get experience under their belts.  Mackenzie had some great surges in the race to move up through several gaps to catch and pass people.

Boys JV

• The boys made the sweep that varsity just missed placing 1-5.  Mikko Vesma (Sr) ran a smart 1^st mile moving to the lead in the second mile and never looked back to earn the win.  His finishing time was fast enough to place him in our top 7.  Gavin Schuler (So), Sam Parks (Sr), Nathan Johnson (Jr), and Jackson Fair (Jr) rounded out the top 5.  Jackson put in a lot of work over the last 800 to chase down an athlete from Montague to finish 5^th.  Peem Torjaras (Sr) was our 6^th finisher with Bryce Cosens (Sr) just missing a lifetime PR to round out our top 7. 

Coach