Four top-12 finishes lead Newton girls to second at Oskaloosa

OSKALOOSA — It was another strong performance from the Newton girls cross country team on Tuesday.

The Cardinals again finished ahead of a ranked squad and closed their gap on Class 3A No. 14 Williamsburg during a second-place finish at the Oskaloosa Invitational.

“Today was all about competing, and the team did that,” Newton head girls cross country coach Rachelle Tipton said. “We’ve chipped away at Williamsburg each time we’ve seen them and knowing the things we can continue to work on, it has the potential to be a very fun second half of the season.”

The state-ranked Raiders placed their five scoring runners in the top 20 and scored 57 points to win the meet championship on a hot evening at Edmundson Park.

The top 20 finishers in each varsity race earned medals, and four Cardinals were in the first 12 positions. They scored 68 points in second and were five points clear of 2A No. 10 Albia (73).

The rest of the top five included Ottumwa (99) and Oskaloosa (112) and Davis County (152), Carlisle (155) and Knoxville (158) completed the eight-team field.

Newton was led by Alexis Sorensen and Audrey Muckler, who both were in the top five. Talia Friedman and Alivia Kingery finished just outside the top 10.

Sorensen was fourth in 20 minutes, 34.9 seconds, while Muckler took fifth in 20:37. Friedman (22:35.2) finished 11th, Kingery (22:47.7) was 12th and the final scoring runner was Sarah Malow (24:09.9) in 38th.

Ashlyn Wallace (24:10) and Meghan Trout (25:22.3) were non-scoring runners in 39th and 53rd, respectively.

It was the first time this season that three pairs of Cardinals finished back-to-back in the individual standings.

“While this was not a PR kind of evening, all returners ran a minute or faster than they did on the course last year,” Tipton said. “They are putting in the work, bringing the new members along and continuing to set big goals. I’m proud of how the team has performed and supported each other through the first part of the season, and we’re excited for the second part.”

Class 2A No. 5 McKenna Montgomery of Albia won the girls’ 5K race in 18:21.5 and 3A No. 29 Channing Becker of Williamsburg finished second in 19:48.9.

Oskaloosa’s Tierney Carter (20:27.8) placed third and was 7 seconds in front of Sorensen.

Notes: Mia Van Zante (28:28.3) and Layla Simon (38:39.4) finished 74th and 86th, respectively, to lead the Cardinal junior varsity runners.