L-S boys win cross country team title at South Hamilton

JEWELL — A pair of top-five finishes led the Lynnville-Sully boys cross country team to a meet championship at the South Hamilton Invitational on Oct. 9.

The Class 1A No. 9 Hawks placed their five scoring runners in the top 30 and scored 74 points at the top of the standings.

The L-S girls were one of six ranked programs in their 11-team field, and the 1A No. 11 Hawks placed tied for fifth with 132 points.

They dropped to sixth due to a tiebreaker with 1A No. 16 Panorama but did not have the services of one of their top runners in Mandeesa Vos due to an illness.

“Tonight was a brand new meet for all of us, against some strong 1A and 2A competition,” Lynnville-Sully head cross country coach Darin Arkema said. “Finally some cooler weather, too, on a really nice course made for a great meet to finish out the week.”

Class 1A No. 19 Colton Alberts and Blake Wilmesmeier of Lynnvile-Sully placed second and fifth, respectively, in the boys’ 5K race. The Hawks were 22 points better than runner-up Ogden (96).

The rest of the 13-team field included Mason City Newman (128), West Marshall (149), Eagle Grove (156), Collins-Maxwell (159), Roland-Story (164), Madrid (167), East Marshall (172), South Hamilton (235), Panorama (248), ACGC (248) and Meskwaki Settlement School (358).

Alberts posted a time of 17 minutes, 6.7 seconds in second. Class 2A No. 11 Corben Lucchesi of Roland-Story was the race winner in 17:01.4.

Wilmesmeier (17:37.27) finished fifth for the Hawks, while the other scoring runners were Madden Gunsaulus (18:52.65), Ethan Dunsbergen (19:09.41) and Sam Terlouw (19:19.48) in 19th, 25th and 29th, respectively.

Evan Arkema (19:31.39) and Keegan Schnell (20:11.81) were non-scoring runners in 32nd and 42nd, respectively.

“I wanted to see how the boys would respond after great races at Wartburg and a pretty good bump up in rankings this past week,” Coach Arkema said. “Would they back it up with another solid effort or be content? Hungry for a victory is how they ran.”

Class 2A No. 1 West Marshall won the girls’ meet title with 59 points. Class 1A No. 3 Madrid was the runner-up with 86 points and the rest of the top five featured 1A No. 10 Collins-Maxwell (95) and 2A No. 19 Roland-Story (105).

After Panorama and Lynnville-Sully in fifth and sixth, were Mason City Newman (166), East Marshall (208), ACGC (225), South Hamilton (231) and Ogden (246).

Emma Parkinson led the Hawks in eighth. Her time was clocked in 20:51.11. Peyton Sharp (22:16.54) was 22nd, Breah Lowry (22:56.91) placed 30th and Isabelle Vos (23:03) ended up 33rd.

Katelyn Nikkel (25:28.61) was the final scoring runner in 59th and Morgan Hay (29:40.06) was a non-scoring runner in 89th.

“The girls were without (Mandeesa Vos) so we no doubt were going to be affected in our team score, but I wanted each girl focusing on their individual race and compete the best they could and make improvement towards their goals,” Coach Arkema said. “The way our girls ran, if you insert Mandeesa where she normally is at, they are 40 to maybe even 45 points better for a score and in third place ahead of Collins-Maxwell and on the heels of Madrid. These girls are capable, but we just didn’t get to see them at full strength tonight.”

Class 1A No. 6 Madelyn Grothus of Madrid won the girls’ race in 19:33.43. Class 2A No. 9 Addie Thompson of West Marshall was the runner-up in 19:45.74.