The Bluejay cross country team stepped up its challenge in last Saturday’s 18-team SPASH Invite.
The boys were missing their top runner Garrett Schmelling and still finished 9th with 244 points, while the girls ranked 12th with 307.
SPASH killed the boys’ field with just 18 to Baraboo’s 61, while the Panther girls beat Beaver Dam 50-68.
“Personal records were the talk of the day,” stated Coach Craig Hoffman. “Our boys and girls ran the way both Coach (Bethany) Martinovici and myself predicted. We knew that there would be potential for individual records on this course. The course was well groomed and had plenty of challenging hills and inclines that our boys and girls worked on throughout practice last week. We were ready to compete and we did fairly well.”
The boys were paced by Ethan Schneider (32nd, 18:07), Jacob Jensen (40th, 18:19), Andrew Seaman (42nd, 18:20), Reese Beyersdorf (63rd, 18:57), Dylan Schielke (67th, 19:07), Andrew Koch (73rd, 19:32) and Trevor Myers (80th, 19:49).
The girls featured Sydney Harris (25th, 16:47), Ashley Berton (59th, 18:05), Kendra Andreska (72nd, 18:23), Kate Williams (75th, 18:31), Morgan Pettit (76th, 18:31), Christa Schleif (78th, 18:34) and Brooke Arneson (92nd, 19:44).
“Ethan Schneider showed a lot of strength at the end, so we know he has a lot of energy left to burn,” Hoffman said. “The efforts of Jacob Jensen and Andrew Seaman continue to show improvement and Reese Byersdorf and Dylan Schielke showed that they can compete with this level of runner. Schielke seemed to be a bit off from previous meets, but his total overall effort help our team place in the middle.
“Our girls’ efforts indicated we ran pretty well as a pack, but we need to see the times drop, especially that second mile. We seemed to drift off the pace a wee bit.
“We know what we now need to do to finish well in the conference and prepare for the sectional run coming later.”