On Saturday the cross country team travelled to Cedarville University for the 33rd annual Friendship Invitational. The teams had a fantastic meet with multiple top 10 finishes and 13 runners posting new personal best times.

The morning started off crisp with the boys race taking off at 9am. We got out to a great start through the first mile and continued to work hard moving up multiple places throughout the race. The team was able to chase down a 6th place finish in a field of 19 teams including multiple state qualifiers from last season and 448 runners in total. Our team was led by Chris Bond with a 6th place finish in a time of 16:24. He was closely followed by Connor Green in 11th (16:30), and Carter Black in 22nd (17:05) all posting new personal bests. Rounding out our top five was James Huff, also with a new personal best time of 17:46 and Austin Hitte (18:06). New personal best times were also run by Bryson Hall (20:13), Daniel Osborne (20:20), Caleb Osborne (21:06), Isaac Shults (24:24) and Donovan Butler (25:51), who managed to cut more than 2 minutes off his previous best time.

The girls race took off promptly at 9:35 and was just as exciting. Our girls came through the first mile all on pace for new personal bests and just kept racing hard the whole way. Kensi Black made her move throughout mile 2 and began pulling away from the field during the last mile. She ran a fantastic, gritty and well planned race to come away with first place out of 206 division one runners, besting the next closest competitor by over 16 seconds and finishing only 8 seconds off her own school record time, completing the race in 18 minutes and 58 seconds. She was followed by Bryley Wulff (23:58), Sarah Wallace (24:07), Kydee Shults (26:25) and Laila Black (26:34), all running new personal best times.

This week the cross country team will host our home meet as well as Senior night. Please join us on Wednesday Sept. 20th for the inaugural running of the Steve Peters Invitational at 4:45. Our junior high boys and girls will race at 4:45 and 5:15 respectively, followed by our high school boys at 6pm and high school girls at 6:30pm. We will also be competing at the Neal Charske Invitational in Kettering this Saturday. Come out and cheer these hard working and impressive athletes on.