By DELBERT PETERS

Staff writer

Seven runners for the Goessel boys’ cross-country team will compete 10 a.m. Saturday in the 2A state meet at Wamego.

A second-place finish at regionals secured their spot.

“We don’t have a dominant lead runner, so when one is struggling, the other kids step up,” said head coach Brian Lightner.

At the regional meet, Adrian Kastner finished in 9th place with a time of 18:05.80.

Dawson Duerksen came in 13th at 18:30.80, Brendan Hicks ran a personal best time of 19:13.10 to come in 24th, and Jacob Schrag rounded out the scoring for the Bluebirds with a 31st place of 19:22.50.

Jerah Schmidt, Chicco Bertozzi and Timothy Schrag finished 36th, 37th, 38th out of 79 runners.

As a team, Goessel finished in second place with 97 points, 25 points behind Ellsworth and 31 points ahead of Hutchinson Trinity.

In the girls’ race, 62 runners competed from 15 schools.

The Bluebird team finished in fourth place, just seven points shy of qualifying for the state meet as a team.

Elsie Clark, a Goessel freshman, finished in 6th place with a personal best time of 21:40.05.

Elyse Boden ran a season best 23:21.8 and finished 18th.

Cassandra and Porclein Unruh finished 34th and 35th; Edel Miller was 43rd, Katelyn Olson 46th, and Alyssa Boden 59th.

Clark earned a spot in the State meet, but will be the only Goessel runner in the 2A girls race. She will run at 11:45 a.m. Saturday.