This past Saturday your Franklin Wildcats cross country teams travelled the short distance over to Lebanon High School for the Running Warrior Invitational. This is a large and premier meet with close to 30 teams and over 250 runners in the varsity races. Our Wildcats gave their best performance of the season so far and it showed, with 6 out of 10 of our boys, and 6 out of 7 of our girls setting new personal bests on a rolling course with some of the areas top competition.

In the girls race our team was led this week by Laila Black finishing with a new personal best time of 22:34.7. She was closely followed by Kydee Shults (23:28), Gigi Perkins (24:19), Bryley Wulff (24:53) and Brooklynn Hall (25:46) to round out the scoring members of our team. Also coming away with big new personal bests were Reagan Pieschel (27:31) and Chloe Moore (36:36) who managed to shave over 6 minutes off of her previous bests time.

The boys race took off fast as Conor George or Parkersburg West Virginia led from start to finish. Our guys ran great tactical races putting up very close to even splits through the mile markers, a sign of mature runners who are not easily taken off their game. Oliver Crosthwaite once again led the charge with a time of 17:59. He was followed by Daniel Osborne (18:42), Donovan Schuyler (19:07), Tre'son Henley (20:24), and Caleb Osborne (21:00) to round out the scoring members for our team. The rest of the boys put up some great times as well with freshman Kellen Dunn posting his first time of the season at 21:08 and challenging for one of the top 5 spots on the team. He was followed closely by Cherif Sore, in his first race of the season as well (21:27). Milo Nau (29:28), Brian Davidson-Cunningham (23:48) and Connor Cole (25:50) also posted some great times.

The Wildcats will be travelling to Piqua this Saturday for our only night races of the season. The Boys JV team will race at 9pm followed by girls varsity at 9:40 and the boys varsity at 10:20 pm. This is a great race, with a great atmosphere. There will be lights illuminating the course and fireworks to start the festivities. Come out and cheer your Wildcats on, you won't be disappointed.