PREP ROUNDUP: EHS girls, WHS boys race to wins at Northwestern

Northwestern boys and girls both take second in NW Combo

Kokomo Tribune - Friday, August 19, 2011

Western’s boys and Eastern’s girls raced to victories in the nine-team Northwestern Combo Thursday. The combo is broken into three chunks, a 1-2 race, a 3-4 race and a 5-6-7 race. Instead of scoring based on places, the times of the top five runners make up the team’s score.

Led by the Neeley twins, Eastern won the girls race in a time of 1:04:02, followed by Northwestern (1:09:20), Carroll (1:14:24), Western (1:14:37) and Tipton in fifth (1:16:47). Taylor was incomplete.

In the 1-2 race, Eastern’s Bethany Neeley won in a course-record time of 11:24 and Brittany Neeley was second at 11:50 to give Eastern a 1-2 finish in the race involving top runners. The Comets also got a 1-2 finish in the 3-4 race with Sarah Wagner and Avery Ewing taking the top two spots.

“It was a very great night,” Eastern coach Brandon Mink said. “We had some great performances. Bethany was under the old course record by three seconds, and that was great to see. Brittany also did very well, and she’s now seventh all-time on the Northwestern Combo race time list. Those two just did a super job.

“In the 3-4 race we went 1-2 as well, so that was great from Wagner and Ewing. One of my biggest question marks was in the 5-6-7 race, but Breanne Donson did a great job in her first-ever cross country race. She was second in that race.”

Northwestern got third from Taryn Thor (12:32) and eighth from Brittany Jocius (14:20) in the 1-2 race. Also, Olivia Price won the 5-6-7 race.

Cara Love was sixth and Chrissy Durr 11th for Western in the 1-2 race.

“It was a good race for us to see where we’re at in our training,” Western coach Joni McCracken said. “Cara Love had a really nice race. Her summer training really paid off. Gina [Jakubowicz] was our second runner [taking fourth in the 3-4 race] — one of our freshmen I was real pleased with where she was at.”

Carroll’s Bridget Peden took fifth and Shari Bowers ninth in the 1-2 race. Kyla Cunningham was fourth and Morgan Pitner 10th for Tipton in the 1-2 race. Peru’s Keyia McConahay was seventh and Emilie Hobbs 12th in that race.

Boys race

On the boys side, Western was first in 56:40, followed by Northwestern (58:33), Tipton (1:00:00), Peru (1:00:42) and Carroll in fifth (1:01:37). Eastern and Taylor were incomplete.

Jacob Bradshaw (10:49) and Austin Elliott (11:19) took fifth and 10th places respectively for Western in the 1-2 race. Also, Braxton Bagwell (11:13) won the 3-4 race while Grant Harbaugh (11:48) won the 5-6-7 race.

Northwestern’s team placed second with Charlie Neher (10:35) taking third and Shad Jakes (10:58) eighth in the 1-2 race.

"I think that was the all-time slowest winning score," said Western coach, Gary Jewell. "However, we haven't been exactly working toward running super fast times for these early season meets. We're concentrating on incresing our endurance first. We had a lot of guys improve over last year. But we also had a couple guys who I think could have ran better races under some different circumstances. I thought Braxton Bagwell ran a nice, consistent, and opportunistic race in winning the 3-4 race. He gapped the field just after the mile and then extended his lead."

“I’m very happy with the performance by the boys, good, solid, second-place finish to a strong Western team,” Stevens said.

“Charlie Neher, he dropped a minute and a half off his personal best, Zach Duraunto, he dropped almost a minute off his personal best, Shad Jakes, a new runner to the team, ran sub-11 [minutes], a very good time on our course.”

Tipton got sixth from Nathan Gonzalez and 14th from Richard Miller in the 1-2 race. Peru got 13th from Zach Allee and 18th from Isaiah Stevens in the 1-2 race. Carroll saw Tallis Bowers take second and Brian Boardner take seventh in the 1-2 race.

Eastern didn’t have a complete team but Adam Schaaf was the fastest runner in the 1-2 race, crossing the line in 10:28. Lewis Duke was ninth.

“[Schaaf] was injured the vast majority of last season, and it’s great to see him be able to get in there and be really competitive,” Mink said. “He ran a very controlled race and kept a good pace and moved up throughout the race, and looked really super.”

Taylor’s Stephon Wallace was 12th and Julian Nieto 16th in the 1-2 race.