Western boys, Maconaquah girls capture XC titles

Kokomo Tribune - Wednesday, October 8, 2014

RUSSIAVILLE — The Western boys cross country team claimed its fifth straight Mid-Indiana Conference championship Tuesday at Oakbrook Valley, while Maconaquah dethroned five-time defending champion Eastern on the girls side.

A pack of Panthers all but guaranteed Western the final MIC boys crown as coach Gary Jewell’s squad took four of the top five spots for a first-place score of 22. Peru finished a distant second with a score of 70.

“It’s nice to win the last conference meet,” Jewell said. “It’s our seventh in the last eight years and it’s good for the program. It shows that we are where we want to be.”

For a better part of the course, it was four Panthers running together, with Lewis Cass sophomore Cail Brown mixed into the pack.

“The idea was to pack it in for at least the first half of the race,” Jewell said. “Our top four for us is so close, that’s what makes us such a formidable opponent.”

Sophomore Josh Everetts distanced himself enough down the stretch to pull off the top overall finish with a time of 17:43. Senior teammates Caleb Maddox (17:50) and Riley Carter (17:52) followed in second and third place. Brown was fourth in 17:52 and senior Auston Davenport rounded out the top five with a time of 18:03.

“Our fifth man, Josh Scott, was less than a minute behind our top four,” Jewell said. “That’s tremendous for him and great for our team.”

Scott just missed the top 10 with an 11th place finish in 18:42.

Junior Nathan Cole finished in sixth place with a time of 18:04 for Peru, while his teammate and classmate Christopher Estrada ran to a 10th-place finish in 18:26.

Hamilton Heights also had a pair of top-10 finishers in senior Craig Schildmeier (18:15) and sophomore Dylan Young (18:25) on the way to a third-place overall finish with a score of 87.

Senior Josh Perry had a top-10 finish for Northwestern, running to eighth place with a time of 18:24.

Other top team finishers were Eastern’s Brenton Cherry, who finished in 12th place with a time of 18:43, Maconaquah’s Quinn Reinhardt, who finished 14th in 18:59, and Taylor’s A.J. Good, who finished in 37th place at 22:05.

Eastern and Cass followed Heights in team scoring, tying with a 110 for fourth place. Northwestern finished with a 121 while Mac had 165.

GIRLS RACE

Maconaquah placed four runners in the top 10 to topple Eastern’s MIC streak on the girls side, taking the top spot with a score of 36.

“The girls and I talked about it and said, ‘Let’s go over and get that last MIC title,’” Braves coach Charlie Hubler said. “It was a big goal for us. We’ve talked about it all year long.”

Western finished in second place with a team score of 56, with Panther senior Nicole Hampshire finishing a full 15 seconds ahead of her closest competition with a first-place time of 20:24.

“I felt like it was a really good race,” Hampshire said. “I had to make a decisive move earlier than I thought I would. I got boxed in at the beginning so I had to make a move within the first 800 meters. That happened to me last year, so I was like, ‘I’m outta here.’ Sometimes you just have to change your race plan.

“I’ve been looking forward to this for a while,” Hampshire continued. “It’s kind of nice to be the last MIC champion. It hadn’t really occurred to me until a couple of weeks ago, actually. Walking into this race, that was my set goal.”

Mac junior Olivia Winegardner crossed the finish line second with a time of 20:39. Teammates joining her in the top 10 were sophomore Kate White (third, 20:56), freshman Madison Winegardner (seventh, 21:30), and freshman Haley Wimmer (ninth, 22:06.)

“Four girls in the top 10 is a great achievement,” Hubler said. “Haley has just exploded in the last two meets and really come into her own as just a freshman. It was a total team effort from all the girls. We never stopped looking at Western. They’ve got great coaching, and those girls run hard. At the mile and a half mark, we had a race on our hands.”

Following Mac and Western in team scoring was Northwestern in third place with a 96. Hamilton Heights was fourth with a 120, Cass was fifth with 122, Peru finished sixth with 127 and Eastern was seventh with 154. Taylor was incomplete.

Individually, Cass’ Haley Johnson was fourth place with a 21:03, while Eastern’s Avery Ewing ran to a fifth place finish in 21:05. Kat Williams finished sixth for Heights with a 21:14, while Peru’s Jesse Zvers ran a 21:52 for eighth place. Western freshman Taylor Walden rounded out the top 10 with a 22:14.

“Congratulations to Maconaquah. They have a great group of girls who you can tell have worked really hard,” Western coach Joni McCracken said. “It was a great day to run. It was nice for Nicole to step into position and control the race. She made it her race.”

Northwestern’s Kate Bilkey finished in 11th with a 22:28, and Taylor’s Cami Hansen ran to a 21st-place finish in 23:28.