Photo Courtesy of Hillcrest Academy Yearbook
The Hillcrest Academy Ravens, Highland Huskies, Lone Tree Lions and WACO Warriors saw plenty of highlights in their final regular season cross country meet Thursday at Mediapolis. Raven freshman Marie Yoder stole the show, winning the first championship of her young career, beating the field by nearly 30 seconds with a time of 20:42. She spoke recently about the race and how it felt to get her first win. Yoder said, “For high school, this is my first win, it was really exciting. It was pretty cool because there has been a lot of good competition. I started out in the front and I built up my lead. I hadn’t ever done that before. It felt pretty great!”
Other runners for the Raven girls included Rya Scott seventh, Delaney Shaw 14th and Brynna O’Rourke 28th. For the Hillcrest boys, they had a team score of 109 points for fourth place. MEPO won their home meet with 24. Top Raven finish came from Micah Gerber in ninth at 19:06. Jesse Blossom was 10th, Isaac Beachy 41st, Jeremiah Danker 45th, Micah Kacmarynski 49th, and Braden Hartsock 50th.
The Highland girls were led by a fourth place finish from Siena Stanerson in 23:25. Halle Hazelett finished 29th for the Huskies. Highland was fifth of five teams in the boys standings with 124 points. Top time came from Brock Thomann 21st in 20:48. Also on the course for the Huskies were Jacob Schneider 38th, Chase Hickenbottom 39th, Brayden Zywiec 40th, Jackson Schneider 42nd, Isaac Giesman 47th, Jackson Robinson 53rd and Spencer Thompkin 54th.
Lone Tree was led on the girls side by Vivian Zaruba’s top 10 in eighth at 23:56. Teammates Jazmine Nino and Abby Zaruba were 21st and 36th respectively. For the Lion boys Joey Birtcher was 11th in 19:23 and Brock Nebergal was 48th.
WACO was led in the boys race by Keriran Luitjens in 17th at 20:20. Other Warriors included Tristan Luitjens 26th and Deacon Bird 31st. For the Warrior girls it was Justine Lynn across the line first in 24th at 26:43, followed by teammate Sarah Craun 30th and Deedra Graber 38th.