PERRY — Sophomore Jackson Mace-Maynard posted his first indi vidual cross country championship in his high school career on Tuesday. Mace-Maynard won the Perry Invitational in 17 minutes, 52 seconds for the 5K race.
Mace-Maynard led Newton High’s Cardinal boys to second place as a team. Bondurant-Farrar won the team title with 43 points followed by Newton with 63 points.
“I am very proud of the boys and how the season is going. You can’t do much better than getting 2 of the 3 top spots,” Newton boys’ coach Steve Weeks said.
Also earning individual medals for the Cardial boys were sophomores Treycen Garton (17:56) in third place and Brennan Amos (18:28) in seventh place.
The Newton girls finished sixth (197 points) in the 10-team field. Junior Ashay Malow captured the 14th-place medal with a time of 22:00.
Ballard was the girls’ team champion with 20 points. Winterset was a distant second with 82 points.
"These girls went out and executed tonight. They were hitting goal times and places and looking strong doing so," Newton girls' coach Rachelle Tipton said. "Tonight should boost everyone's confidence heading into the next two meets, we just need the weather to cooperate so we can have them."
Sophomore Kelsey Church and freshman Kate Muckler finished right together for the 5K course. Chuch was 30th in a personal-best time of 23:19 with Muckler a second behind at 23:20 for 31st.
Kelsey and Kate worked well together, never settled, and kept chasing people down. Willow also did a great job of moving up throughout the race. Junior Willow Oswalt was 49th in 25:09 and senior Tes Schuster was 56th in 25:34.
"Kelsey and Kate worked well together, never settled, and kept chasing people down. Willow also did a great job of moving up throughout the race," Tipton said.
Senior Jenna Smith was 61st in 25:51. Heather Perry, a sophomore, was 107th in 30:45 to round out Newton's top seven varsity runners in the race.
For the Cardinal boys, freshman Jared Smith finished 27th in 19:15 and senior Luke Zaabel was 29th in 19:18. Sophomore Derek Beiner took 47th in 19:54 and senior Chayton Lambertus-Hamm was 56th in 20:25.
"We just need to bring up our third to fifth team finishers. All five point scorers are valuable in cross country in team scoring, and our team is strong, it was just B-F had a tighter group who scored better than us," Weeks said of the Cardinal boys.
Weeks said Bondurant-Farrar beat Newton's boys earlier in the season by nearly a hundred points and Ballard beat us in that same meet. Ballard finished third at Perry with 87 points
"So it felt great to overtake Ballard and to close the gap with B-F," Weeks said.
The Cardinal cross country teams compete at Thursday’s Fort Dodge Invitational. Races start at 5:20 p.m. at Lakeside Golf Course, which is the site of the state meet Nov. 2, in Fort Dodge.
