With some welcome cooler temperatures, the Knights took to the rolling hills of the Northwestern Medicine Cross Country Course to face county teams in our first test of the season. Powered by two top-5 finishes in the Varsity race, and a close scoring pack of three, we finished second behind Marmion Academy.
We opened the day with the Open Race which brought new and old faces to the course. Grant Caston set his personal best mile pace at 7:01, running 16th on the short course at 16:50. Gavin Schnurstein, coming back from injury, established his new best mile pace for racing at 7:16, running 17:26 (19th). Chase Fuller got back to running cross country races, and finished 38th in 19:41. Bryce Ehlers crushed his first effort in a race and ended the day in 53rd place at 24:52.
Our Frosh Soph group was next, with a bunch of sophs setting new career PRs. Nathan Kowalczyk took 4th in 17:34 with a (-:48) career best time. Nolan Reutimann did the same, knocking 1:57 off his previous XC PR to set his bar at 17:45 (8th). Sahel Torres also notched his best ever time, running 19:13, good for 22nd overall. Freshman Drew Gritzner was next to the chute, running 19:18 (25th). Newcomer Gianni Middona set his sights on breaking into the 19s and did so, running a solid 19:33 to cap our scoring in 28th overall.
Zavier Nothnagel finally got to run a cross country race and has a new career best mark of 19:38 (29th). Mason Stalcup posted his best 3-mile effort mark at 20:05 (35th). Ricky Anderson got back to running competitively after a spring of baseball and finished 37th in 20:20. Matthew Kray, running his first race ever, took 47th in 21:56 for his new best.
On to varsity where Evan Nosek found friends early to pace with and at the 2-mile mark he decided he needed to push up for time. Nosek finished first for the second year in a row, running a :35 course PR in 15:20. Also setting the new standard for best on this course, Evan Whildin chipped in a solid 5th place showing, on the rebound with his legs, to complete a :16 course PR in 16:07.
Our next wave of runners came about a minute later when Zachary Murdock (17:08, 22nd, :28 course PR) and Liam Lentz (17:11, 23rd, :45 course PR) put up points in our 3-4 spots. A solid run from our fifth runner capped our scoring. Joey Schuch nabbed 28th, running a career best time of 17:26, taking 1:54 off of last year’s County race. Another huge improvement came from our #6, Sean Meagher. Sean set a :44 career PR running 18:50 (46th). Jack Nevenhoven was our second pusher as 7th man, running 19:07 and taking :63 off his best from a year prior.
Elijah Fiedler (61st, 20:38) was next to the chute, running a 2:26 course PR at NWMXC. Lucas Fiedler came to the finish line 5 places later at 21:29, improving his mile pace from 2023 by :13 on a longer course. Johnny Neville closed out our varsity team performance running 21:50 for 68th overall. Strong first outing for the group!
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