At the OHSAA Division II cross country meet our Wildcats overcame adversity in order to make history. For the first time ever both the boys and girls cross country teams have qualified for the regional championship meet next weekend at Troy. The Wildcats have qualified either the boys or girls teams in the past, but never both teams in the same year, and this is a testament to the hard work, and hundreds of miles, that everyone has been putting in since June. The way that each and every member of our teams stepped up and did what had to be done in order to advance was amazing to watch.

The day began with the girls championship race at 10 am with the sun shining brightly across the Elvin R. King Cross Country course at Cedarville University. Unfortunately, what should have been a fairly easy qualifying race for our ladies became more complicated as one of our top runners had to sit out due to an injury. Everyone else stepped up though and met the challenge. Laila Black led the team coming away with a 15th place finish in a time of 20:35, she was followed by Gigi Perkins (21:53) in 44th and Kydee Shults (22:30) in 52nd overall. Our 4th and 5th girls were tasked with a huge job needed to run some of their best races in the season in order for the team to advance. Bryley Wullf (24:29) and Meryn Berry (25:22) rose to the occasion with Meryn again this week running a new personal best time, after just last week shaving a full 40 seconds off her previous best time. The effort was just enough as the ladies team finished 10th overall out of 22 schools with runners competing, giving themselves a chance to race again next week.

The drama did not end there, as the men's race also did not go according to plan, but yet again the Wildcats showed their resilience with more than half of the team posting the best times of their careers, some by a wide margin. The race started well for about the first 400 meters and then Oliver Crosthwaite was taking off his spikes and removing a safety pin from his foot before putting his shoes back on and rejoining the race. With our top runner now sitting at the very back of the pack he had a lot of ground to make up, and the rest of the team needed to step and run well. With what was possibly our tightest team grouping of the season everyone did their part. Oliver was able to slowly make his way back up toward the front of the race and place 37th overall with a time of 18:00. He was very quickly followed by Tre'son Henley with a new PR of 18:06, Daniel Osborne in 18:32 and Donovan Schuyler in 18:38. Kellen Dunn was our 5th runner to cross the finish line in a new personal best time of 19:12 giving us a team spread of only 72 seconds between our first and fifth runners. Kian Gatliff (19:46), and Cherif Sore (19:48) both broke the 20 minute barrier for the first time in their careers and finished ahead the next few teams 5th runner doing the critical job of adding points to their team scores and widening our margin making for a more comfortable qualifying place of 10th out of 22 teams with athletes competing.

The Wildcats will now compete next Saturday at Troy High School in the OHSAA Regional Championship meet. The ladies will take to the course first competing in the division II race at 11:50am. The men's team will follow with their race starting at 12:30 pm. The weather is looking perfect and the course is set up for some extremely fast times. Come out and cheer on your hometown Wildcats as they look to advance some individual runners to the State Championship meet.