On Saturday the men's and women's cross country teams made the short trip over to Lebanon High School for the Running Warrior Invitational. After a sweltering week the early morning storms caused an hour delay, but also led to much better temperatures for racing.

The boys started the day at 9am with in the Varsity race. The ground was soft from the rain, but not sloppy, but the hilly and open course did not yield many fast times. Leading our team again this week was Oliver Crosthwaite who came away with a 45th place finish out of 251 runners in a time of 17:49.9. Also placing within the top 100 was Daniel Osborne in a time of 18:43.9. Our two freshman on the team both came away with new PR's this week, which is pretty impressive considering that the course this week was much more difficult than the one they ran on last week. Those freshman were Kian Gatliff with a 29 second PR of 21:10.1 and Austin Cook with a 42 second PR time of 22:53.4. Overall the Men's team finished 18th out of 34 teams with athletes in the varsity race.

The women's race started at 9:35am and went out fast. Laila Black again had one of the best races of her career. She went out hard with the leaders and came through the mile marker at a 6:06 pace. Settling into a groove she came away with a 21 second PR of 20:52.2 and a 25th place overall finish out of 219 runners to lead our team to a 16th place finish out of 36 schools with runners. Laila was followed by Kydee Shults (22:43.1) in 76th place and Gigi Perkins (23:04.1) in 92nd place as our other runners in the top 100 overall.

Next week on Saturday September 12th the Wildcats travel to Piqua for a meet under the lights. This meet is better described as an event with each race starting with fireworks and lots of fanfare. The girls race begins at 9:55 pm followed by the boys at 10:30pm. Come out, enjoy the show and cheer on our Wildcats.