Lady 'Jays finish third in Hillsboro meet
Tabor College cross country team hosted the Tabor Invitational Saturday at Cottonwood Point at Marion Reservoir.
The women's team, led by a pair of top-10 finishers out of 67 runners, took third out of 12 competing schools with 97 points.
The Bluejay men's team came in fifth with 159 points, led by freshman Anthony Bartlett's 26th place personal best time of 29:24.
The Butler County Grizzlies won both divisions with the Hutchinson Blue Dragons finishing as runners-up.
The Lady Grizzlies and the Blue Dragons, both ranked among junior college's top 10, finished with 32 and 61 points, respectively.
Butler's men beat out Hutchinson, 26-40.
For the women, Heidi Schmidt paced the Tabor team with an eighth place time of 19:53, also a personal record.
"Heidi is running really well right now and she broke into the 19s for the first time," Bluejay coach Karol Hunt said. "Our main goal this week was to make the 20:30 standard in order to be nominated for the NAIA Academic All-American honor."
Despite not being 100 percent all week due to illness, Angie Jost's final home meet was still respectable.
Jost also stayed under 20:00 by a hundredth of a second for 10th place.
The trio of Amber Wiens (21, 20:41), Tiffany Stevens, (35, 21:51), and Rebekah Lockhart (49, 22:51) all set personal records.
"We have been pretty solid with the first three finishers and we have been focusing on closing the gap with the fourth and fifth runners," said Hunt. "We've made a lot of progress.
"Two weeks ago we finished two points behind Newman (fourth, 100) and today we finished three points in front. Little things can make a big difference in a team place. The women did really well, everyone contributed to the strong performance."
Despite a fifth place finish, the men's team found out tragic news when it was announced earlier in the week that the team's top runner, Pete Richert would be lost for the year due to a knee injury.
Suffering a rough race a week earlier, Jeff Anenson bounced back to take 35th in 29:50, finishing the second highest for Tabor for the second consecutive time.
In a tough battle to stay in the top 50 out of 71 runners, three Bluejays filled out the 44th, 4th, and 47th places in personal record times.
Kevin Larson was 44th (30:23), Matt Lynam, 45th, (30:34), followed by 47th Kyle Larson (30:48.)
Michael Norris took somewhat of stumble this week, taking 56th in 32:33.
"We are in the process of refocusing and looking for more consistency from race to race," said Hunt. "Pete is providing some leadership from the sidelines, but I am still looking forward to the other guys stepping up more. We are still a young team and that only comes with time."
On tap for the Bluejays Saturday will be a return home for Jost at the Colorado College meet in Colorado Springs.
Men begin at 9:30 a.m. with the women starting an hour later.
