Both St. Louis boys’ and girls’ cross country took on their first meet in the new Jack Pine Conference at Meridian High School, Sept. 18., and the boys ended up in fifth place overall and the girls 6th.
In the boys’ race, the team fought the harsh heat to end up in a fifth place finish overall. The top five runners on the day were Landon Pestrue running 17:05, Colin Kuhn with 18:20, Alex Rodriguez close behind clocking 18:39, Hayden Shattuck at 19:52, and Jackson Schulz running a 21:55.
For the girls’ race, the top runners competed hard to break into a top six finish. Leading the St. Louis pack was Abby Dice with 22:29, followed by Halle Hoyt running 23:18, Lilly Mann clocking 24:27, Sydney Dickman close behind finishing with 24:44, and Annah Hess closing out the top five with 26:00.
It’s safe to say that the meet day was in the midst of some blistering heat that the boys’ and girls’ teams had to battle. Coach Jay Puffpaff stated, “We competed tough in hot conditions … We got a good look at some of the new teams in our conference and look forward to making improvements in the following JPCs.”
“Throughout the first two miles of the race it felt really good … once the third mile hit, it went downhill from there,” said Alex Rodriguez.
“I feel like we did pretty good on how we placed due to the heat and how the course was,” Rodriguez continued. Although this race was not the greatest for most of the team, the Sharks are still aiming to improve from this, as always.
