Area teams show improvement in Grinnell
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| Newton’s Tanner Hull (left) and Sam Wenndt fight to the finish line side-by-side during Tuesday’s Grinnell Invitational. (Mike Hockett/Daily News) |
GRINNELL — The Newton cross country team likely won’t see a meet as stacked as Thursday night’s was for the remainder of the season.
Facing some of the best competition in the state, the Cardinals, along with area teams Lynnville-Sully and PCM ran at the Grinnell Invitational in what was the second meet of the season for Newton and the Mustangs and third for the Hawks.
The Cardinals and Lynnville-Sully boys teams tied for 11th place with a score of 273 points, and Newton took the tiebreaker with its sixth runner. Knoxville’s 54 points topped the boys standings, six ahead of Pella. Grinnell and Ottumwa were third and fourth.
Benton, Pella and Williamsburg are three of the top 4 teams in 3A, while Union-La Porte City is No.1 team in 2A.
“This is a tough meet,” said Cardinals’ boys coach John Bartello. “Overall we placed about where I thought we were going to place. We made some of the goals we were setting and set a couple personal records.”
Mitch Roush was Newton’s top runner for the second-straight meet, finishing 36th in 18 minutes, 59 seconds. Alex Osborn wasn’t far behind, taking 38th in 19:05. Joseph Lothe, Tom Miller, Colton Gearhart, Grant Cooling and Tanner Hull rounded out the varsity.
“I’m pretty proud of them,” Roush said of his varsity teammates. “We did pretty good I thought. We’re improving a lot.”
Leading the Hawks was Andy Sneller, who took 29th in 18:33. Travis Morvant was 53rd in 19:34, with Bill Trettin and Blake Rozendaal right behind in 57th and 59th.
PCM’s top boys runner was Jesse McAtee, who took 44th in 19:19, followed by Dakota Springer in 65th.
On the girls side, the Cardinals finished tied for eighth with 227 points. They were led by a 22nd-place run from Josie Thurmond in 17:37 and Alexis Des Planque’s 32-place finish in 17:59. Katie Ranard was 39th overall in 18:16, while Jenni Johnson and Mariah Doland were 63rd and 71st.
“Top to bottom, it was pretty outstanding,” Newton girls coach Mike Castings said. “I was pleased with how our kids ran. Tonight Josie ran really solid, Katie ran well, and Alexis ran well.”
Page Reed won the girls junior varsity meet in her very first high school race, and Castings said if she ran on the varsity Tuesday night that her score would have helped the Cardinals place considerably higher.
For the Hawks’ girls team, they got an 11th-place finish from Alexa Vander Leest in a time of 17:01, while Karli Roozeboom was 20th in 17:32. Kelsi Vanden Hoek, Cassie Schwartz and Maddison Jensen took 56th, 70th and 87th.
The course was a lot different than last week’s Southeast Polk Invite, which was held on a reformed landfill that was hilly throughout. Tuesday’s race at Ahrens Park in Grinnell was much flatter, winding around four baseball diamonds and was a more traditional high school course. It also made wind more of a factor.
“The course was the flattest we’ve been on so far but the windy conditions may have slowed down everyone’s times tonight,” said Lynnville-Sully coach Darin Arkema.
“It’s pretty flat, so that’s good,” Roush said. “Over on the straightaway you had to draft a lot.”
For the Cardinals, their next meet is tomorrow at Johnston’s Walnut Ridge recreational park. That race begins at 5 p.m. The Hawks race again on Monday at Ballard.
“From last week to this week, we saw vast improvement,” Bartello said. “The guys are showing me they’re really pushing themselves to get better.”
