The Ord High School Cross Country teams traveled to Atkinson on Thursday, September 28 to compete in the annual West Holt cross country invitational. The meet featured Class D scoring where the top three runners count toward your score and the top five count as your team. The Chanticleer boys finished 3rd in the field of 18 schools with 30 points. Boone Central won the meet with 29 points while Valentine finished just ahead of the Chants with 29 points. “I thought our kids ran well in this meet and we just came up a little short in the end”, Coach Derry Trampe commented. “It is easy to look at how close we were to the runner-up spot and find a lot of different ways to score a few less points but I felt like our guys competed as well as they could in this meet. We have made a lot of progress and still have some gains to make before the end of the season.” Rounding out the team scores were: Boyd County (35), Elkhorn Valley (43), West Holt (52), O’Neill (63), North Central (94), Creighton (99), Ainsworth (112), CWC (120), Niobrara/Verdigre (150), and Burwell, Twin Loup, Riverside, Sandhills/Thedford, St. Edward, and Neligh-Oakdale did not field enough runners to score in the meet.
The girls did not have enough finishers to score in the team standings again this week. “Our girls are struggling with some injuries, so it is hard to field a team right now”, Coach Trampe stated. “We are running as well as we have all season, and our times are coming down, so I feel we are doing the right things. We just have some nagging injuries that are holding people out of meets. I am proud of what our girls are doing we just need to get them healthy.” Ainsworth won the team title with 17 points while North Central was second with 23 points and West Holt third with 28 points. Rounding out the team scores were: Elkhorn Valley (47), O’Neill (49), Boone Central (53), Niobrara/Verdigre (87), Burwell (93), Valentine (95), CWC (97), Boyd County (99), St. Edward (146), and Ord, Twin Loup, Sandhills-Thedford, Neligh-Oakdale, Creighton, and Riverside did not field enough runners to score as a team.
The top three scoring boys for the team were Garret Severance, Elijah Pollard, and Grady Moudry. All three runners were in the top 15 and brought home medals from the meet. Severance was the top finisher for the team and placed 7th in the race with a time of 18:25 over the 5,000-meter course. Pollard was right behind him in 8th place in 18:30 while Moudry was 15th in a time of 19:03. The two pushers for the team were Brody Blair and Brodie Klimek. Blair covered the course in 19:49 to finish in 27th place while Klimek was 38th in a time of 20:36. Also competing in the race were Gavin Whited, Skyler Probst, and Braden Bruha. Whited finished in 42nd place with a time of 20:51 while Probst was close behind in 44th place in 20:55. Bruha finished 63rd in the field of 108 runners in a time of 21:58.
Avery Bruha was the lone medal winner for the girls. Bruha finished in 15th place in a time of 23:31 to earn her medal. Elisabeth Bengston finished 62nd in the field of 68 runners with a time of 32:29. Izzy Jeffres made it through a little over a mile of the race before she had to stop due to a lower leg injury. Skylar Kokes was not able to run in this meet as well due to an injury from earlier in the season.
The Junior high competed in their last race of the season and went out on a high note. The junior Chants had a total of 4 medal winners on the day and the boys team won the team title for the second week in a row. In the girls’ race, Peyton Melnick earned a medal again this week when she finished 14th in the field of 52 runners. Melnick covered the 1,600-meter course in a time of 7:54. Earning medals for the boys were Finn Reilly, Jaxon Edghill, and Jacob Medina. Reilly finished in 2nd place with a time of 6:31 and Edghill was 8th in a time of 6:57. Medina was 13th in a time of 7:09. Also competing for the boys were James Piskorski (20th in 7:18), Kyptan Scheideler (22nd in 7:22), Leo Wolf (40th in 7:56), and Dakota Rogers (42nd in 8:12). There were 52 boys in the junior high race. The boys scored 21 points to win the meet and bring home a team plaque. O’Neill was second with 25 points and Boone Central was third with 26 points.