This Tuesday night the Varsity Boys and Girls Cross Country competed at the Tom Karpen Cross Country meet in West Des Moines at the Valley Freshman High School. The boys finished 5th in the Varsity and 2nd in the JV race while sitting most of their top runners. Some of the boys Varsity athletes felt as if they didn’t perform the way they should have “I felt really good the first mile but at the mile and a half mark I died” Brandon Vu ’18 said. However the statistics say otherwise for being the second string varsity they had the best spread in the race coming in at 29 seconds between all of their runners finishing the race. Young Guys Hunter Briggs ’20 and Drew Schmidt ’20 also had fantastic races finishing 18th and 29th and running 17:39 and 18:07 respectively. “I think a lot of guys raced really well today,” Assistant Coach Patrick Mattingly said.

The girls faired slightly better than the boys finishing 2nd in Varsity and 2nd in JV while also resting their top athletes. The Varsity girls competed well but were no match for Waukee as they were running their top athletes put only finished 36 points behind them. However Lindsey Batkiewicz ’19 ran a superb race finishing 5th and running a 20:35 and possible putting herself in a position to earn a Varsity spot on the team. The girls also had a young talented runner on show in the Varsity race last night Addy Franklin ’21 who finished 22nd and a 22:07.

Both teams have a ton of potential and have aspirations on winning state while the girls are trying to repeat the boys are trying to win it for the first time in there history. “We want to win state this year because we know this is one of the most talented team we have had in years,” Head Coach Matt Jaschen said.