By Brennan Stebbins (For OzarksSportsZone.com)
By the time the final runners were crossing the finish line, Avery and Riley Arnold were already loading up in a car to leave the Lamar Country Club.
As if finishing first and second in the Class 1 District 4 cross country race wasn’t enough, the twin sisters, both freshmen at Blue Eye, had a four-plus hour drive ahead of them so they could play in Blue Eye’s sectional volleyball match Saturday afternoon at Lesterville.
“I actually just tried to find them,” Blue Eye coach Jacob Thompson-Krug said after the race. “They’ve already jumped in the car and left.”
With the top two teams and the top 15 individuals qualifying for next week’s state championship, Blue Eye’s Braylynn Siercks added a third-place finish to help secure the team’s district championship and fourth trip to the state meet.
The Arnold sisters ran neck-and-neck for the first lap before Avery pulled ahead. She finished in 19:41.4 and Riley followed at 19:46.8. Siercks finished in 21:28.8. The rest of the field was more than 30 seconds back.
“At conference last week those same three girls finished 1-2-3,” Thompson-Krug said. “We have Class 1 and Class 2 competition in that meet so we were feeling pretty confident coming out here on this flat course and going against only Class 1 competition.”
Riley was the faster runner at last week’s SWCL Conference meet, where she finished in 19:43 to beat her sister by 27 seconds. Avery had won six races before that.
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“Avery won the majority of the races the first half of the season,” Thompson-Krug said. “There was a race where Avery didn’t run and Riley ran and she set the school record (18:33.55). She didn’t have Avery to pace with and she just ran fast the whole time, didn’t know she could do it. After Avery saw that she started increasing a little bit and they’ve been back and forth the second half of the season.”
Blue Eye’s Olivia Labrier finished sixth on Saturday. Skye Hobbs finished 18th and Madison Suffal was 29th.
Sparta claimed the second spot in the team standings, finishing 26 points behind Blue Eye and fending off Crane by 12. Sparta placed four in the top 11, with Kimber Rains (22:07.3) finishing fifth, Michaela House taking eighth, Brooke Wiggins placing ninth and Hannah Hudson placing 11th. Payton Long finished 32nd.
There were seven other individual qualifiers. Crane’s Rani Bain finished fourth in 22:00.1, Purdy’s Joy Grace finished seventh in 23:00.7, Thomas Jefferson’s Jennalee Dunn finished 10th 23:51.5, Wheaton’s Lori McNeil finished 12th in 23:54.8, Purdy’s Makenna Orwig placed 13th in 24:05.6, Crane’s Chesney Essary finished 14th in 24:12.4, and McAuley Catholic’s Gliza Damaso finished 15th in 24:15.2.
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Blue Eye boys earn first trip to state cross country meet
While the Blue Eye girls will be making a return trip to state, the Blue Eye boys will be there for the first time after winning Saturday’s district race. And conference rival Crane provided the motivation to get them there.
“It feels great,” Thompson-Krug said. “Crane beat us in conference last Saturday. We knew that was going to be our competition coming out. We didn’t talk about meeting times, we didn’t talk about getting in the top 15 we just talked about getting our five in front of Crane’s five. We came out and did that today. We met our goal.”
Blue Eye beat Crane in each of the top five spots, led by Chris Lemp finishing third in 17:55. Ryan Cardenzana was sixth in 18:25, Ethan Webb was eighth in 18:41.5, Roman Ray was 16th in 19:34.6 and Keagan Hobbs was 17th in 19:45.2.
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Crane, which finished second and also qualified for state, was led by Zachary Cook’s ninth-place finish in 18:44.3. Treavis Batson was 11th in 18:53.3, Harley Hebert was 12th in 19:06.3, Drew Johnson was 18th in 19:51 and Lucas Bentley was 20th in 20:09.3.
“The difference was my third runner, Ethan Webb,” Thompson-Krug said. “Last week he was behind Crane’s third runner and today he was in front of all three of their runners so that took points away from them.”
Titus Thompson, from School of the Ozark’s, took home individual honors with a time of 17:26.5. He was joined by eight other individual qualifiers, including three from Purdy. Wheaton’s Marek Smith was second at 17:43.5, School of the Ozark’s Adin Hiebsch was fourth in 18:17.8, Greenwood’s Nathan Fletcher was fifth in 18:22.3, Galena’s Caleb Clark was seventh in 18:33.7, Purdy’s Zackary Brewer was 10th in 18:45.7, Purdy’s Dawson Abramovitz was 13th in 19:09.4, Purdy’s Alan Rodriguez was 14th in 19:09.8 and McAuley Catholic’s Connor Ramsey was 15th in 19:10.8.
