Tigerhawks complete first meet with unofficial results

JOHNSTON — A malfunciton with the scoring system prevented Colfax-Mingo and other cross country teams from knowing exactly how they fared against one another at Thursday’s Johnston Invite held at Camp Dodge.

Official results weren’t available at the conclusion of the race after several runners’ times went unaccounted for due to a problem with the electronic time and place-keeping system. Some entire teams, such as Prairie City-Monroe, went unscored.

The meet was the first of the season for Colfax-Mingo. The course at Camp David was punishing at times, taking runners up and down several steep and twisting hills.

“It was a really difficult race, honestly, because there were so many hills,” said Colfax-Mingo senior Ivy Moore, who paced the Tigerhawks’ girls squad with a time of 19:37. “It was awful. We’ll run around Colfax and it’s pretty hilly there. We’re always like, ‘Oh, meets aren’t this bad. It’s never this hilly.’ This meet has definitely proven us wrong.”

Joining Moore on the course in the girls race were Kennedi Hostetter, who posted a time of 19:49. Behind her were McKinzie Tjaden with a time of 20:35 and Cassie Craig in 24:21.

Colfax-Mingo’s girls team competed without multiple runners, including Sara Lahart and Dakota Hostetter, who’s ranked No. 12 among Class 1A runners. Both runners were playing for the school’s volleyball team Thursday night.

“Our top three tonight did an awesome job, and Cassie, who was our fourth runner, very proud of her efforts as well,” Colfax-Mingo head coach Zach Tomas said.

Tomas also spoke of the course’s difficulty after the meet, saying it was the “toughest course that we’ve ran at in my tenure.”

“It was like one hill after another,” he said. “You get up in that upper region up there and you thought you were at the top and you kept going. It’s a good thing to tell the kids, ‘Hey, you won’t see something this tough (again),’ so mentally it helps for the next meet.”

The boys team for Colfax-Mingo was led by Jonathan Jacobs and Alex Lewis as both runners finished with times of 21:56. KC Huffman posted a time of 23:20 for the Tigerhawks while Jacob Frier (26:05) and Will Dunsbergen (27:41) rounded out the lineup for Tomas’ squad.

Overall, the fourth-year head coach said he saw plenty of positives come from the meet.

“I was kind of nervous that maybe we were behind on some things because other teams have ran some meets before us, and I think that might be the case a little bit, but we definitely don’t have as far to go as I thought coming in,” Tomas said.

Full race results will be published once they are made available.