On a cool breezy morning at Platte Ridge Park, the West Platte CC teams hope to send the boys team to state for the 20th year in a row and the girls for a third year fell just short as both teams finished third in the Class 2 District 8 meet. The boys finished behind 13 points behind Lexington (who finished 5th at class 2 state last year) for 2nd place and watched as fellow KCI school Lawson ran home with the 1st place plaque. Phillip Pattison will get to continue his outstanding career with a final race at state as he finished as the overall individual district champion in a time of 17:29. Charlie Kinslow and Ryan Pattison will also have one more opportunity to lace on their sneakers as they too qualified for state finishing 4th, 17:58, and 8th, 18:35 respectively. The top 15 individual runners qualify to advance along with the top two teams. Coach Lowe could not be happier with these three as they have consistently improved all season and really pushed themselves on the course.
As for the girls, they gave it a great run as well, finishing only seven points behind Summit Christian who finished second to Lawson. Lexi Elmore, as with Phillip, will have one more race in her illustrious career as she placed 10th running her best time of the year, 22:24. Bella Clark finished in 12th place and so was all district as well and will run with Lexi at state next week. Both the boys and girls ran well, with four-season or career-best times for the boys and three for the girls but it just was not enough to overcome three PR's for the Lexington boys and four PR's for the Summit Christian girls. As you see these young people around town, please make sure you congratulate them all for a fine season and let them know you are looking forward to seeing all those underclassmen run next fall.