The West Platte Cross Country team got back on the bus Oct 8th for the first time since Sept.24 due to scheduling and rainouts and performed well as they ran at a large meet hosted by Excelsior Springs High School.
The boys ran very well on this hilly golf course and finished 4th out of 22 full teams. Phillip Pattison and Charlie Kinslow continued their quality seasons finishing 6th and 8th respectively. Times were in the 18:30's but this course seemed to add about 20-30 seconds to every runner's season-best time. Ryan Pattison ran really well and finished 41st in his second-best time of the year, 20:05 which Coach Lowe was very happy with considering the magnitude of the course. Hutch Bartee and Hunter Sadell also ran quite well to finish 58 and 72 respectively out of 162 runners. Hutch ran 20:44, his second-best time of the year and Hunter set a new PR by almost a minute. For him to do that on a very hard course was quite encouraging. Isaac Helmich and Coy Taylor both battled through some injury to finish 6th and 7th for the Jays. This was a good meet for the boys as they got to see Lexington up close. Lexington will be one of the top teams in the district race to see which teams advance to state. So to see that we could run with them was encouraging.
As for the girls, the team finished 6th out of 9 full teams. Lexi Elmore led the way with a 19th place finish. Bella Clark (23rd place) was the next Blue Jay to cross the finish line followed by Sophia Rush in 28th place. The times for the day were not the best but, as with the boys, the course seemed to add 30-40 seconds to a runners time. Coach Lowe was very pleased with Bella's day as she ran very well compared to runners she had run against previously at the St. Mary's meet., to the point of only adding 4 seconds to her time while the other runners added close to 30 seconds to their times. Addison Rinehart and Olivia Marquart were the 4th and 5th runners for the Blue Jays as they pushed themselves to finish a very hard course. The Blue Jays next run at Kearney on October 12th, and they have their home meet out at Platte Ridge Park on October 19th. Coach Lowe hopes to see a lot of the West Platte faithful in attendance.