MONTEZUMA — Lynnville-Sully’s cross country runners were able to have a preview of the course they’ll run for the 2014 South Iowa Cedar League meet. A week ahead of the SICL meet, the Hawks competed in the Montezuma Invitational cross country meet Thursday.
“We get to compete two weeks in a row at Montezuma, so I was looking forward to competing there tonight,” said Darin Arkema, Lynnville-Sully head coach. “I wanted to see how we could run the course, as well as compete against a lot of our conference teams a week before our conference meet.”
South Tama won the girls’ and boys’ team titles Thursday with the girls scoring 52 points and the boys scoring 51 points. Colfax-Mingo and Pella Christian, two non-league teams, tied for second in the girls’ division with 85 points each. BGM scored 95 points for second in the boys’ division.
Lynnville-Sully’s girls finished fourth with 103 points while the Hawk boys were fifth with 148 points followed by the Colfax-Mingo boys in sixth with 150. Arkema said his teams were short-handed Thursday, competing with out two girls and four boys.
“Those absences certainly impacted our team scores, but I was proud of how everyone who competed stepped up and ran strong. I’m confident that if we can come back full strength next week, we’ll finish really well in our conference,” Arkema said.
Cori Rice paced the Lynnville-Sully girls, turning in one of her best races of the season. Rice ran the 4K course in 17 minutes, 53 seconds for third place. Kasiah Ehresman was 20th as the Hawks No. 2 runner in the race, crossing the line in 19:40.
Haley James placed 24th in 19:55, followed by Shelby Foster in 29th at 20:23. Kristine Jaennette finished 34th in 20:44, Alexis Hardenbrook was 43rd in 21:41 and Rebecca Morningstar took 48th in 22:53.
Canyon Kuhlmann battled at the front of the race the whole way, running strong with three other individuals from conference schools that he will get another crack at next week, Arkema said. Kuhlmann was fourth Thursday, posting a time of 18:26 for the 5K.
Luke Jones came in at 21st in 20:47 as the second Lynnville-Sully runner to finish. Connor Fraker took 40th in 22:22 followed by Jared Bassett in 52nd at 24:21 and Brett Maasdam in 61st in 28:16.
Contact Sports Editor Jocelyn Sheets at (641) 792-3121 Ext. 6535 or at jsheets@newtondailynews.com