Sorensen, Muckler lead Newton girls to 11th at Wartburg College

WAVERLY — Five area runners returned home from a stacked cross country meet with top-80 medals on Saturday.

The Newton and Lynnville-Sully girls cross country teams faced off against a plethora of ranked programs at the Dan Huston/Steve Johnson Invitational at Wartburg College.

The Cardinals placed 11th in the 25-team field and Class 1A No. 9 Lynnville-Sully was 19th.

“The team keeps progressing in the right direction,” Newton girls head cross country coach Rachelle Tipton said. “Whether it was season-best times, very close to season bests or running faster than this meet last year, the athletes are showing the work they put in.”

Alexis Sorensen finished about 7 seconds in front Audrey Muckler in the top 31 and Talia Friedman also ended up in the top 80 for the Cardinals.

Lynnville-Sully was led by Emma Parkinson, who placed 51st in the girls’ 5K race.

Class 4A No. 1 Pleasant Valley edged 3A No. 1 Pella by 12 points in the final standings. Pleasant Valley won the meet title with 44 points and Pella scored 56 points in second.

Class 3A No. 3 Mount Vernon-Lisbon (150), 4A No. 12 Linn-Mar (179) and 3A No. 7 Decorah (186) completed the top five. Class 3A No. 14 Williamsburg (225), 4A No. 18 Iowa City Liberty (276), 3A No. 18 Cedar Rapids Xavier (278), 3A No. 9 Solon (280) and Mason City (282) completed the top 10.

Newton scored 308 points in 11th. The Cardinals finished in front of 2A No. 5 Mid-Prairie (380), 1A No. 6 Earlham (469) and 1A No. 9 Lynnville-Sully (499).

“They all gave an amazing effort today,” Tipton said. “The runners today were pretty close to 100 percent back to healthy, which is always a big help.”

Sorensen placed 29th in the girls’ race with a time of 20 minutes, 0.9 seconds. Muckler was 31st in 20:07.3 and Friedman (21:56.8) grabbed one of the final medals in 78th.

The other two scoring runners were Sarah Malow (22:36.1) and Alivia Kingery (22:49.2) in 97th and 105th, respectively. Ashlyn Wallace (24:48) and Laek Sullivan (25:15.7) led the non-scoring runners in 159th and 167th, respectively.

Meghan Trout (26:30.8), Mia Van Zante (28:28.5) and Layla Simon (33:74.4) also were non-scoring runners in 186th, 192nd and 205th, respectively.

“(Friedman) and (Malow) were instrumental in creating a big score gap with the 12th-place team as both made big gains in the second half of the race and had great finishes,” Tipton said. “(Simon) opted to run in the varsity race (taking the 10th spot we were offered instead of being a lone JV runner) and ran a tough race with a fantastic time.”

Parkinson placed 51st to lead the Hawks. She was clocked in 20:54.2. Breah Lowry (22:26.9), Mandeesa Vos (22:45.9), Peyton Sharp (23:38.7) and Katelyn Nikkel (27:28.1) completed the scoring runners in 95th, 103rd, 127th and 188th, respectively.

Nikkel is dealing with some knee inflammation but decided to run to give the Hawks a chance to score as a team.

“The purpose of going up to a meet like this with a big field of runners and lots of spectators was to give them exposure to that type of an environment a few weeks ahead of their state qualifying meet and hopefully state meet,” Lynnville-Sully head cross country coach Darin Arkema said. “We were down to only five girls due to volleyball conflicts. We also had run a race already in the week, plus a couple of them were either just getting over an illness or dealing with some nagging soreness.

“But that didn’t stop them from going out to give their best against predominantly larger schools competition as well as some teams from other states.”

Class 4A No. 2 Joley Sullivan of Davenport Central won the girls’ race in 17:47.1. Class 3A No. 1 Marissa Ferebee of Pella was the runner-up in 17:49.2.