A sloppy course at Saturday’s Shawano Invite had MHS coach Greg Eichelkraut commenting, “I’m kind of confused. Was this a cross country or a swim invitational?
“Traditionally this is a fast course, but the conditions cost all the runners 25-30 seconds. Actually, the course was in pretty good shape except for where it headed into the woods. The kids had a lot of fun. It was relatively cool so they didn’t run into the kind of heat you can find at this time of year.”
The Bluejay boys ranked 11th of 12 teams and the girls were 11th of 11, but the meet was a success for the team.
“On the boys side, we were on fire,” Eichelkraut said. “From the JV on up, every runner met a season best or surpassed it. We were pushing our limits and our splits were right on. We kept pretty tight packs in both race.”
Sophomore twins Andrew Seaman (33rd, 19:14) and Michael Seaman (44th, 19:55) paced the crew, and freshmen Trevor Myers (47th, 19:58), Andrew Koch (57th, 20:08) and Ethan Schneider (63rd, 20:32) capped the scoring. Mitch Sherfinsky (74th, 22:08) also ran. Myers finished well despite losing a shoe early in the race.
“Ironically, it was before he got to the mud that someone stepped it off,” Eichelkraut said.
Sydney Harris pushed all the way to 6th in the D1 race and placed 8th overall in 16:40.
“Sydney put herself up there with the big dogs and made the all-invite team,” Eichelkraut said. “The girls team as a whole maybe moved up too soon because they faded at the end, but I told them they may want to make a move outside their comfort zone. I was pleased with their efforts.”
Ashley Berton (24th, 17:30), Kelci Peterson (70th, 19:48), Maria DeBroux (71st, 19:50) and Kendra Andreska (74th, 20:06) filled out Merrill’s squad.