Highland harriers have a productive week, despite injury to top runners
Last weekend was a productive one for the Highland boys’ cross-country teams.
The Bulldogs boys varsity and freshman/sophomore teams traveled to Springfield for the Springfield Invite at Lincoln Park.
“I feel pretty good about it and we loaded up our fresh/soph side to see how those times compare to people around their age and we were missing Dallas Mancinas, our No. 2 runner (due to an Achilles issue) and we were missing Donnie Miller, and Adin Roach,” Highland coach Joe Shannon said.
Both teams turned in strong outings. The Bulldogs varsity placed 10th overall with 251 points as Christian Knobloch and Avery Brock led the way placing 9th place (16:36.90) and 13th placed (16:49.;90) as both runners medaled in the race.
“For Christian, he was 18:16, so he took off almost a minute and a half from last years’ time which is just really impressive to do in just a year’s amount of time on the same course,” Shannon said. “Avery, the year before he was at 17:38, so he improved around 40 seconds on his time from the year before, so I was really excited about how competitive those two were because Springfield’s a really tough course ...”
Jack Grotefendt (96th place), Sam Huelskamp (105th place), and Aden Peters (115th place) rounded out the top five finishers for Highland.
Highland fared even better in tbe freshman/sophomore race as the Bulldogs took fourth place with 88 points. Highland finished three spots behind Mississippi Valley Conference rival Mascoutah which won the race with 46 points.
“We got fourth and I was hoping for a little better place as a team, but Mascoutah’s got pretty good program, so that was kind of the reason for it,” Shannon said.
Miller led Highland with a second-place finish, running a time of 18:70.6 while Roach placed 10th (18:45.70).
“He was close to even splits which is hard to do on a hilly course because lot of time you go out really quick on the first mile and then fall back, so that was exciting to see,” Shannon said. “We got two in the top 10 at the fresh/soph race, so that was really exciting for us as coaches.”
Walker Nerht (24th place), Liam Priest (40th place), Judah Tippitt (44th place), Zach Smith (47th place), and Adam Gillison (56th place) rounded out the Bulldogs finishers for the freshman/sophomore race.
Next up for Highland’s boys and girls teams is the Triad Invite on Wednesday and the Peoria Invite on Saturday.
Shannon is hopeful Mancinas will be run in one or both meets while the girls team should be rested after a week to heal up from bumps and bruises and ready to go this week.
“There’s a lot of good conference schools that will be at Triad (Wednesday) and Saturday at the Peoria race there will be a lot of great competition on both the boys and girls side,” Shannon said. “So, we’re really looking forward to this week with some flat courses and hopefully good competition and we’re pretty excited for it.”