Also, for the first time this season, there were more girls competing in the races than boys. This is most likely attributed to the number of athletes from all-girl schools. Then, to make the Varsity Girls race exciting was getting a chance to see the fastest girl in the country, Taylor Werner, a sophomore from Ste. Genevieve (Class 3), lead all girls in a field of 142. As predicted, she finished 1st at 17:25.01, which was one minute, 42 seconds ahead of the 2nd place runner, a teammate of hers.
Dani Pair seems to be recovering from her twisted ankle. She was the only Tiger girl to earn a medal placing 40th overall and 15th among the Class 3 girls. Katelen Moerschel and Micaela Lynch finished 86th and 93rd overall, respectively. Micaela has been suffering from pain in her foot and was instructed to take it easy.
Ste. Genevieve also had the fastest boy at the meet. He crossed the finish line in 16:14.17. In all, six boys finished in the 16's. Christian Carter and Ben Hartwig represented the Excelsior Springs Tigers. Christian earned a medal with his seventh consecutive top 10 finish of the season placing 4th of 34 in Class 3. Overall, Carter placed 19th in a field of 183 (10.3%) Varsity Boys. Hartwig earned his second Varsity medal of the season with a 21st place finish in Class 3 and 114th (62%) overall.
Three girls ran for Excelsior in the JV race in a field of 43 in Class 3 and 48 overall. Five of the girls racing were Class 2 from Lutheran North. The remainder were Class 3. April Stodgel had a great start. At the first mile split, she was in 4th with a time of 6:50.4. By mile two, though, she had fallen back to 26 and finished 30th. Her sister, Ali, finished 39th overall and Autumn Summers came in at 46th.
Finally, the five JV Boys assembled their team at the starting line for their race in a field of 61, 29 of which were registered as Class 3. Of the 61 runners, 18 were running for Bolivar (Class 3) and 11 were with Lindbergh (Class 4). For the first mile, the Tigers seemed to be right on schedule, but then the hills and heat started getting to some of them and they began to slow down somewhat. Bailey Dolata still had an impressive finish crossing the line 12th overall behind one-third of Bolivar's runners. Seth Edwards continues to impress with his ability to move up in the pack and his strong finishes. Overall, he placed 24th with Logan Stock close on his heels at 29th. Not too far behind them was Lane Rogers in 39th place and Brent Shelor in 45th. As a team, they finished 3rd overall in a group of five teams and 2nd in Class 3 behind the large group of Bolivar runners. All five boys earned medals in the race.
Looking back, it appears the heat and the hills got to some of the runners. There were signs of lack of hydration, though it is apparent that the heat was more than they expected, too. Naturally, a cold front moved through later in the evening cooling the temperature down by about 30 degrees.
Of the 13 Tiger runners, eight earned medals, and none ran their best race of the season, although they all ran their course best since it was their first time on the course. There is hope that it won't be their last this season or through their high school career.