The Prescott Cardinals cross country teams, both boys and girls, won first place in the 5K events at their lone home meet of the season on Tuesday, Sept. 14.

The Tuesday afternoon cross country meet began with the boy’s 5,000M event at a course that has become notorious throughout the Middle Border Conference for its challenging terrain. Prescott was able to best navigate the difficult course, posting a firstplace score of 33 points, which was 11 points better than Spring Valley’s second-place finish of 44 points.

In addition to a first-place team finish, four of the top 10 individual times were posted by Prescott runners. Tyler Loucks finished in second place with a time of 18:12.2, Ryan Zerneke finished fourth with a time of 18:58.9, Eric Korfhage finished seventh with a time of 19:21.9 and Matthew Lynes finished eighth with a time of 19:23.2. After the meet, coach Matt Sachs reflected on the boys’ first-place finish.

“We had four boys finish top ten and to put it into context, it’s the home meet, you get the opportunity for a lot of family and friends to come out and see what we’re really made of,” Sachs said. “I know that meant a lot to the kids. Overall, we couldn’t have been happier with how the home meet went. It’s hard to complain about the double first-place finish.”

The boys’ first place finish was the third such result of the year out of four total meets. The only non-first finish was a second-place finish.

Other notable results in the 5K boys event include Ellsworth’s Alex Pazdernik, who finished in first place as an individual with a total time of 17:43.0, which was 29.2 seconds faster than Loucks who finished in second place. The top finisher for Spring Valley was Charlie Maier. Maier finished with a time of 18:36.4 which earned him solo third place as an individual.

Girls 5,000M

The second event of the cross country meet was the girls’ 5K event. The Prescott Cardinals finished in first place as a team for the first time this season. In total, the Cardinals finished with 34 total points, edging out a second- placed Baldwin-Woodville team that finished with 46 points.

The Cardinals were led by junior Ella Johnson, who finished in first place overall with a time of 22:49.4. The second-

See INVITE, Page B-3 place finisher was another Prescott runner, Amanda Auleciems, who finished with a time of 23:23.3. Similar to the boys’ results, Prescott had four female runners finish in the top 10 spots in terms of individual race times. Those include the two aforementioned results as well as Alee Warp’s sixth-place finish with a time of 24:33.3 and Abby Overland’s ninth-place finish with a time of 25:09.4.

“The meet overall was a little bit smaller than your average, maybe by a team or two,” Sachs said. “We have run against some of these teams before and we thought we would perform well. We’re not used to having people finish in first, second, or third in past years, so that’s been really exciting.”

According to Sachs, the team hasn’t been at full strength this year because multiple runners have had nagging injuries that have kept them sidelined for multiple meets.

“With the girls’ team we’ve dealt with some injuries,” Sachs said. “Those injuries have been to girls that have historically run varsity. It’s been good to see some of the other girls step up.”

One of the girls that stepped up and performed at the highest level is the aforementioned Johnson, the Prescott runner who took first in the girls 5K. It was the first individual win of Johnson’s young running career.

“I could have gone faster, it wasn’t my personal record, but the hills weren’t easy today,” Johnson said after the meet. “It feels really good (to win). Overall though, I ran well today. This changes my expectations going forward.”

The Prescott girls have improved at every meet this year. In the first meet of the year, they finished fourth, the next meet they finished third, after that they finished second and the growth culminated in a first-place finish at the only home meet of the year.

The second-place finish was at the Somerset Cross Country meet on Thursday, Sept. 9. At that meet Loucks finished in second, Ryan Zerneke finished in fourth, Auleciems finished in fourth, Warp finished fifth and Korfhage finished ninth. Overall, the Prescott boys took first as a team and the girls finished with the silver medal as a team.

The next cross country meet on the schedule is slated for Thursday, Sept. 23, at 4:30 p.m. at the Rolling Greens Golf Course in Durand.

Prescott junior Ella Johnson moments before crossing the finish line in first place at the Prescott Cardinal Invitational. The individual victory was Johnson’s first career cross country win. Photo by Reagan Hoverman

Runners from Ellsworth, Prescott, Baldwin-Woodville and River Falls in the early portion of the girls’ 5K race at the Prescott Cardinal Invitational. Photo by Reagan Hoverman