The cross country squads from Eastern, Kokomo and Western tested themselves against a high-caliber field of teams Saturday at the Culver Academies Invitational, which also drew teams from Illinois, Michigan and Ohio.

Eastern's girls elected to race up a division, participating in the Open Division (larger schools) instead of the Closed Division (smaller schools). The Comet girls took fifth out of 35 teams in the Open race. Carmel won the event with a score of 66, Eastern scored 198. Kokomo was 34th with a score of 1,153.

Bethany Neeley took fifth in 18:05 to lead the Comets. Sister Brittany Neeley was 28th in 19:02, Sarah Wagner was 53rd in 19:41, Carly Jones was 59th in 19:46 and Avery Ewing was a place behind in 60th in 19:48. The open race had 243 runners.

"We ran against some very highly ranked teams," Eastern coach Brandon Mink said. "Including us, there were four out of the top six teams ranked in the state at the meet. We ran very well, very similar times to what we ran at New Prairie last week. This is the best preview of the state meet that we're going to run into with that kind of feel and quality. I thought we did very well.

"We had several people shave off a few [seconds]. Bethany did a great job of getting down to fifth place, really >beat some outstanding individuals"

Kierra Bronson led the Wildkats in 229th with a time of 25:33. Erica Goodman was 232nd in 26:00. Hannah Reecer was 233rd in 26:01. Elise Glover was 234th in 26:42. And Mary Lucas was in 27:00.

"I was very pleased with the performances considering the weather and the competition. They performed as well as they could," Kokomo coach Dave Barnes said, noting that eight of the team's 10 runners had season bests.

Western scored 409 to take 16th out of 33 squads in the Closed race. Indianapolis Chatard won the division with a score of 124, Plymouth was second at 172, and Culver Academy third with 173. The overall winner was Madeline Lilly from Twin Lakes in 18:57

For Western, Emma Nixon was 10th in 20:21, Nichole Hampshire was 27th in 20:56, Sam Luginbuhl was 78th in 22:28, Taylor Nunan was 155th 24:07, and Olivia Nixon was 163rd in 24:25

"There were close to 4,000 runners in all the races combined," Western coach Joni McCracken said. "The girls did very, very well. Eight of my nine PRed by quite a margin. We are still working on our confidence and trusting our training. We have a couple of weeks to polish that up heading into the sectional."

Boys race

In the Open Division for larger schools, Kokomo took 40th .

Jeremy Breedlove led Kokomo with 200th place in a season-best 17:51. Jordan Fivecoate was 234th in 18:22, Ethan Sharp was 255th in 18:33, Logan Hawk was 262nd in 19:22 and Josh Revils was 266th in 19:34. The Wildkats had a season-best average time of 18:48.

St Xavier of Ohio won the Open race, edging Indiana superpower and state top-ranked Carmel. Tippecanoe, Ohio, runner Sam Wharton won the race with a 15:14. The race drew 13 teams ranked in the Top 25 in Indiana.

In the Closed Division (smaller schools), Western took sixth place with a score of 258. Illiana Christian won the division with a score of 64. The Closed race had 40 complete teams. Carroll took 20th with a score of 562. Eastern was incomplete.

Western had all its runners in the top half of the Closed race, which included 277 runners. Matt Grider led Western with a 10th-place finish in 16:24, Jacob Bradshaw was 28th (17:09), Riley Worl was 53rd (17:40), Austin Elliott was 82nd (18:09) and Caleb Maddox was 94th (18:16). Teammate Auston Davenport was 95th, a second behind.

"We saw our cumulative time improve by over three minutes from last week to this week – largely because Matt ran [he was injured last week], but also because Jacob Bradshaw ran a personal best by 29 seconds. I was pretty sure that he was ready for a breakthrough race based on his workouts in the last week," said Western coach, Gary Jewell.

"Right now we're looking pretty good. We had 11 guys run personal bests, including Matt He was in the lead pack through about two and a half miles and then he faded a little bit, but part of that was due to missing a week of training so he'll be OK.

"To put things in perspective, when we won the sectional two years ago [on the same course], we ran 87:44, and [Saturday] we ran 87:40."

Eastern had two runners, both of whom placed high. Lewis Duke finished seventh in 16:18, and Adam Schaaf was 23rd in 16:56.

"Lewis came on especially very, very strong in the last 1,000 meters and went from 14th to seventh in that time span. He just really cranked it down, really looking great," Mink said. "Adam consistently has been running well, so we're looking for great things from them in the postseason coming up shortly."