X-C teams compete in Humboldt Invite; boys place third

The Clear Lake girls and boys cross country teams traveled to the Humboldt Invitational Monday, Sept. 21.

The Lion boys came away a respectable third in the varsity race behind two good teams.  An unranked Gilbert team upset 11th ranked Humboldt to take the win in the field of 21 teams. The Gilbert boys posted a score of 90, with Humboldt following with 102. Clear Lake came in one place higher than fourth place St. Edmond Ft. Dodge, with 128 and 129 respectively.

“We would have liked to be closer to second and further from fourth, but we will get another shot at them next week,” said Coach Tyler Havens.

Of the 145 finishers, all seven Lion runners came in with the top third of the pack.  Owning a third place finish was senior Justin Wright with a time of 18:10.60. Wright was followed by sophomore Leo Tolentino in 17th place just under the 19 minute mark, 18:59.40. The following five boys finished closely: sophomores Chris Molander (30th in 19:28.30), Jack Crane (35th in 19:33.50), Jaden Wright (43rd in 19:47.00), Andrew Mixdorf (46th, 19:56.90) and junior Joe Faber (49th place in 20:00.80).

Girls Varsity

The Lion ladies continue to show improvement week by week.

“I was happy with their overall performance on Monday. We will hopefully be back to full strength next week, so we can see where we actually stack up against some of these teams in our conference,” said Coach Havens.

As a team, the girls finished in 17th place with 392 points.  Winning the race was the Gilbert girls, collecting only 84 points in the meet. Second place went to Woodbury Center-KP with 91 points and St. Edmond Ft. Dodge finished with 122 points.

Leading the Clear Lake girls was sophomore Jadyn Heesch, finishing 68th in a time of 26:19.60. Following Heesch was senior Jillian Enke, 73rd, 26:49.00. Junior Emily Roberts landed 78th in the race with a time of 27:10.20 and sophomore Emily Benitz earned 96th in 28:13.10. Haley Jackson, a junior, finished 115th in 30:49.30. Rounding out the Lion team was Gretchen Guetzlaff and Kristina Miller, ending their races at 120 and 125 with times of 32:13.80 and 36:05.57.

Boys Junior Varsity

A cause for celebration was junior Vlad Starrett taking the junior varsity race by storm and earning a first place finish in a time of 20:44.80. Following his strong finish was Tanner Reimann in eighth place with a time of 21:07.02. Elijah Mock and Easton Goeman ended their run together, taking 19th and 20th just seconds apart, 22:20.80 and 22:23.10.

Other JV boys runners included Ethan Zickafoose (34th, 23:28.50), Conner McKibben (54th, 24:52.00) and Ethan Evelsizer (75th, 26:17.90). 

The JV boys came away with a second place team score of 77 points. Humboldt won the team title with 39 points. The Lions were followed by the Gilbert team with 85 points.

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