Trojan cross-country competes at league meet
Allen claims Hillsboro’s sole title, varsity boys sixth
Staff writer
The Trojan cross-country team’s season got underway August 30th, competing at the Smoky Valley Invitational at the Lindsborg golf course in sunny, sweltering heat.
A month and half later, the Trojans returned to Lindsborg Thursday, competing in the Central Kansas League meet.
This time, it was maybe 50 degrees colder as Mother Nature blanketed most of the state with a week’s worth of rainfall.
That threw a monkey wrench in Hillsboro’s machine with the wet course forcing competition to be moved to the park and a concrete course.
It did competition no favors with numerous sharp turns hampering runners.
Just the same, it didn’t knock the Trojans down too far as all times were close to their personal bests.
While the concrete course might have stymied most of coach Kodi Panzer’s team, seventh-grader Levi Allen wasn’t among them.
Allen again cruised to a league title, remaining unbeaten on the year with a 5:31 mile-run, nearly a half-minute ahead of Reno Valley runner-up Carsen Blasdel.
In eighth grade girls competition, third-place Hillsboro’s Ainsley Duell finally cleared the 14:00 hurdle by a second with her 13:59 time good for 6th place.
One place and second behind her was Moriah Jost.
Karley Loewen rounded out Hillsboro’s eighth grade competition with a 12th place time of 15:23.
For the eighth grade boys, Josh Diener barely missed the top 20, coming in 21st at 15:35.
Emersyn Funk paced the varsity girls, securing 8th place in 22:04.
Millie Sechrist was 31st out of 32 runners in 27:16.
Outside the eighth grade girls, the varsity boys were the only team with enough participants to keep score, taking sixth with 155 points.
Stalwart Halstead rolled to the league title, beating out Hesston 38-50.
Caleb Diener nearly beat the 18:00 mark and finished in the top 10, coming in 11th in 18:02 to pace Hillsboro.
Tristan Reed finished 33rd out of 34 at 19:32.
On deck for the Trojans Saturday are regionals at Burlington.