Bison girls runners 7th, boys 9th at Minden cross country meet

Eustis-Farnam girls 4th;

McCook's Connor Larson

wins junior high race

MINDEN -- The McCook High School girls cross country team placed seventh with 119 points and the boys were ninth with 154 at the Minden Invitational Saturday.

The Eustis-Farnam girls finished fourth with 58 points. The Knight boys did not have enough runners to post a team score.

McCook Junior High runners also competed.

The Minden boys and Gothenburg girls won the team titles with 17 and 33 points.

The top McCook boys runner was Carson Kain, who placed 32nd in the 5K (3.1 miles) race with a time of 19 minutes, 34 seconds.

Bryon Roberts was 34th with a time of 19:54, followed by Riley Haney, 41st, 20:06; and A.J. Judd, 65th, 21:27.

Eustis-Farnam's Ben Kugler placed 56th, 20:40; Bronson Gerken, 74th, 22:04; and Ethan Jones, 75th, 22:04.

The McCook varsity girls were paced in the 4K (2.46 miles) by Molly Peck, 24th, 17:55; Emily Geschwentner, 33rd, 18:27; Hailey Buddenburg, 34th, 18:30; Kelsey Schoup, 43rd, 19:13; Megan Skiles, 50th, 19:39; Jessica McMurtrey, 55th, 20:27; Adrian Lambing, 62nd, 21:45; Jennifer Herron, 63rd, 21:47; and Sarah Calvin, 64th, 21:55.

Eustis-Farnam's Amanda Buehner and Johanna Nutt placed eighth and 11th with times of 17:09 and 17:11. Taylor Martin was 17th, 17:23; Hillary Wills, 25th, 17:56; Leah Keller, 37th, 18:35; and Raquel Taylor, 58th, 20:52.

McCook's Connor Larson finished first in the one-mile junior high race with a time of 5:02.

McCook's Jessa Sughroue placed fourth overall and was the top girls runner with a time of 5:38.

Teammate Kelsea Geschwentner placed 11th overall with a time of 6:01, followed by Austin Swartz, 17th overall, 6:21; and Laura Brooks, 21st overall, 6:30.

"Again we continue to improve," said McCook cross country coach Tom Sughroe. "We had five runners return from last year to run the Minden course.

"All of them ran a faster time than they did last year. Carson Kain ran 1:54 faster, Megan Skiles 11 seconds, Kelsey Schoup 56 seconds, Jennifer Herron 3 minutes, Sarah Calvin 2:13.

"These times total up to be 8:20 of team time, this is a great to see as a coach. I just love to see kids improve and becoming stronger competitors. You know the team is working hard to see that much improvement from year to year. I have no doubt that we will continue to improve, becoming a more competitive team.

"Once again our junior high runners are doing an outstanding job. Our young runners had a great day."