What a great fall day for some fantastic cross country racing. On Saturday at the Legacy Ambassador Invitational in Xenia the conditions were about as good as they get. With temperatures in the 50’s and leaves on the ground it felt like a perfect fall day for racing and the Wildcats certainly came to race. This was a new course for our athletes but they powered their way through the hills and finished with lots of PR’s and season bests. The girls team came away with a 4th place finish and the boys finished 6th out of over 15 teams that attended the meet.

The girls had an amazing day in Xenia. Laila Black cut her time down for the 4th meet of the season with a PR of 23:30. Bryley Wulff (24:05) and Kydee Shults (24:19) were just a few places from each other. Kydee had another great race with a PR. Sarah Wallace (25:12) came in 4th for the Wildcats and Julionnya Junaitis (33:24) rounded out the team with a 90 second PR. “It was a great day to race,” Coach Hill states, “it was nice to finally see what these girls were made of while having perfect conditions to race in.”

In the boys race we were down our top racer and team leader as Connor Green is currently dealing with an injury, but the rest of the team stepped up. We were led by sophomore Oliver Crossthwaite who came away with an 8th place overall finish just 5 seconds shy of a new personal best finishing with a time of 18:10. Right behind him was teammate Daniel Osborne with a time of 19:27, which was a season best and only a couple of seconds from his PR at the end of last season. Connor Cole (20:56), Donaven Butler (21:13) and Titus Routson (27:38) all ran new PR’s and this was Donaven’s 4th new PR this season as he continues to make huge strides and see success. Donaven was also voted the golden spike award winner for this week by his teammates as an individual who works hard at practice, continually gives his best effort and is uplifting and encouraging to his teammates. Caleb Osborne 23:31 got a great start to this race and continued to battle being the 5th and final scorer for our team.

Next weekend our Wildcats travel to Springboro high school where the boys will compete at 9:00 am followed by the girls at 9:30 am. This is one of the closest meets of the season for our athletes and they would love to see some support as they go out and compete.