By Michael Cignoli (For OzarksSportsZone.com)
CLEVER — The East Newton boys and Osage girls continued their run of district championships, winning the team titles at the Class 3 District 2 meet on Saturday afternoon.
It was the third consecutive title for the Patriots, who held off a challenge from an El Dorado Springs team led by individual champion Daelen Ackley and emerged with a meet-low 55 points. The Indians won their second in a row by also outlasting the Bulldogs, who had three of the top nine overall finishers but could not catch Osage’s meet-best team score of 71.
Both El Dorado Springs squads still qualified for the state meet, as the top four teams and top 30 individual finishers from districts will all advance to next Saturday’s race in Columbia.
But it’s the Patriots and Indians who celebrated with the coveted first-place plaques after posting the best finishes on a slow, sloppy course that had been soaked by recent rainfall.
“We knew it was going to be pretty sloppy and muddy,” Patriots coach Jake Holt said. “They had a lot of rain. We just wanted to get out and make sure we were toward the front a little bit and settle in. Our top three guys did a good job of that and settled in.”
Those three — Kelton Sorrell, Chase Sorrell and Gabe Bergen — finished second, third and fourth for East Newton, each of them crossing the line in under 17 minutes.
That gave the Patriots a solid foundation that was pivotal, as the other runners in the top six were all from El Dorado Springs. Ackley finished in 15 minutes, 50.68 seconds — 35 seconds ahead of Kelton Sorrell — while Connor Goatley was fifth and Garrett Klaiber sixth.
With lower scores being better, the Patriots led 9-12 after all six runners finished the race. They then got 12 points from Isaac Bales and 34 from Nicholas Shaeffer to hold on for a nine-point victory that gave the team some momentum after a challenging past few days.
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“It was kind of a rough week of practice with the weather,” Holt said. “The timing of the really hard downpours wasn’t ideal. We didn’t really get to run on Wednesday or Thursday because we didn’t want to risk getting sick. We ran in the gym for just a little but it was a pretty tough week. Not ideal, not what we were hoping to get out of it. But hopefully we’ll have a good next week of training and get some workouts in Monday and Tuesday. Hopefully things will go better for us on Saturday next week.”
The days leading up to the race went slightly better for the Indians, as senior Juliana Bryant was finally cleared to resume practicing after suffering a stress fracture in September.
Getting the team’s usual No. 2 runner back immediately prior to districts proved to be all the difference for the Indians, who finished 27 points clear of El Dorado Springs. Bryant finished fifth among the Indians at 35th overall, higher than the final two Bulldogs, to seal the win.
“She’s not where she wants to be,” Indians coach Miriam Hill said. “I think she feels like — you know, as an athlete, when you’re not running your best — I don’t think she feels like she contributed to the team. But she did. That’s why we were first today.”
The muddy conditions also might have helped the Indians, who are used to it by this point.
“Three of the eight meets that we ran were in mud,” Hill said. “We, actually, were prepared for mud. This is one of the flatter courses that we’ve run this year, so that was really good. We ran exceptionally well.”
Bayley Johnson (11th place, six points), Katherine Wolf (20th, 11) Abby Maschhoff (22nd, 13) and Addison Fowler (26th, 17) also scored points for Osage in a race where several of the top individual finishers were from schools that didn’t have full teams. Those runners were excluded from the finish order when calculating team scores, explaining the difference.
One of them, Lamar’s Kiersten Potter, won the girls race in a time of 19 minutes, 28.36 seconds to claim the individual district title. Potter was 39 seconds faster than anyone else.
“I just wanted to have a good pace,” Potter said. “I wanted to have like a 6:30 pace so I didn’t tire myself out. I knew the ending was going to be muddy and I would have to put in some more effort at the end just to keep up.”
Ackley, the boys champion, said his time was about 40 seconds off his personal record.
“Originally the plan was to go fast,” Ackley said. “But when I got here, I was like ‘There’s no way’ because of the mud. So then I was teetering back and forth with different race strategies and then I just ran how I felt. I settled into a pace and hit that.”
Now a four-time district champion, Ackley was content to finish in under 16 minutes given the circumstances. He was also thrilled with how the rest of the team performed.
“It was biggest for our team because we’ve kind of been underperforming and we’ve been going through a lot,” Ackley said. “But we put five in the top 30 and definitely just moved up in the rankings. That’s the big thing, just doing my part to help my team out as much as I can.”
GIRLS TEAM RESULTS
1. Osage*, 71
2. El Dorado Springs*, 98
3. East Newton*, 100
4. Strafford*, 107
5. Cassville, 123
6. Clever, 134
7. Mountain Grove, 172
8. New Covenant Academy, 183
9. Springfield Catholic, 228
10. Reeds Spring, 232
11. Ava, 264
12. Fair Grove, 276
No other team had at least five runners
*State qualifier
GIRLS STATE QUALIFIERS
1. Kiersten Potter (Lamar), 19:28.36
2. Hannah Klaiber (El Dorado Springs), 20:07.69
3. Audrey Goatley (El Dorado Springs), 20:11.09
4. Kaci Singer (Aurora), 20:26.11
5. Bethany Waggoner (Willow Springs), 20:32.67
6. Kaylee Fulliam (Cuba), 20:37.53
7. Macey Penner (Mountain Grove), 20:56.05
8. Alyssa Alcantara (Warsaw), 20:57.93
9. Kenli Rader (El Dorado Springs), 21:02.04
10. Piper Keith (Strafford), 21:11.59
11. Bayley Johnson (Osage), 21:13.79
12. Jolie Evans (Cassville), 21:20.53
13. Sadie Abercrombie (Buffalo), 21:25.34
14. Chloe Smith (Clever), 21:28.52
15. Riley Britton (Clever), 21:28.54
16. Elizabeth Barratt (East Newton), 21:29.20
17. Katherine Schaefer (Hollister), 21:29.65
18. Hailey Jade Unruh (Willow Springs), 21:32.31
19. Vanessa Perona (St. James), 21:32.33
20. Katherine Wolf (Osage), 21:33.27
21. Alonna Eytcheson (East Newton), 21:33.87
22. Abby Maschhoff (Osage), 21:43.04
23. Jasmine Hayes (Strafford), 21:43.98
24. Annie Moore (Cassville), 21:58.89
25. Anna McCune (New Covenant Academy), 22:05.88
26. Addison Fowler (Osage), 22:07.58
27. Melayna Brown (Cuba), 22:12.35
28. Clara Trent (New Covenant Academy), 22:21.68
29. Dakotah Anderson (Cassville), 22:25.53
30. Gracie Johnson (East Newton), 22:28.20
BOYS TEAM RESULTS
1. East Newton*, 55
2. El Dorado Springs*, 64
T-3 Osage*, 106
T-3 Strafford*, 106
5. Lamar, 122
6. Willow Springs, 124
7. Fair Grove, 184
8. Cassville, 192
9. Mountain Grove, 274
10. Warsaw, 292
11. Aurora, 337
12. Salem, 338
13. Reeds Spring, 340
14. Mount Vernon, 365
15. Forsyth, 380
No other team had at least five runners
*State qualifier
BOYS STATE QUALIFIERS
1. Daelen Ackley (El Dorado Springs), 15:50.68
2. Kelton Sorrell (East Newton), 16:25.03
3. Chase Sorrell (East Newton), 16:43.91
4. Gabe Bergen (East Newton), 16:50.73
5. Connor Goatley (El Dorado Springs), 17:04.79
6. Garrett Klaiber (El Dorado Springs), 17:08.30
7. Sean Walker (Buffalo), 17:09.53
8. Carson Smith (Willow Springs), 17:10.79
9. Andrew Norris (Mountain Grove), 17:12.02
10. Tristan Silva (Willow Springs), 17:49.56
11. Logan Fraker (Strafford), 17:56.90
12. William Faulconer (Osage), 18:00.01
13. Isaac Bales (East Newton) 18:05.45
14. Nolen Geitz (Fair Grove), 18:07.07
15. Jacob Semple (Strafford), 18:09.02
16. Kevin Sparks (Osage), 18:10.82
17. Colton Willis (Strafford), 18:12.37
18. Caleb Leach (Cassville), 18:12.65
19. Nolan Perkins (Willow Springs), 18:13.54
20. Quintin Webb (Lamar), 18:14.26
21. Colin Misenheimer (Osage), 18:14.66
22. Cameron Bailey (Lamar), 18:15.65
23. Pierce Heins (Lamar), 18:16.66
24. Blaine Breshears (Lamar), 18:16.51
25. George Montez (Warsaw), 18:20.36
26. James King (El Dorado Springs), 18:21.73
27. Ethan Bohmke (Cassville), 18:22.63
28. Blayze Mccullough (El Dorado Springs), 18:26.54
29. Jaysen Groll (Osage), 18:29.20
30. Canyon Crowley (Fair Grove), 18:33.86
