Reedsdale – The Bison and Lady Bison cross country teams began the season in similar fashion on Saturday at the Big Valley Invitational by each placing fifth in AA competition.
Alex Coval was the top freshman overall in the boy’s race with his 12th place finish. Fellow freshman Paige Mikesell placed 11th in the girl’s race to lead the Lady Bison.
Head coach John Jacob was pleased with his teams’ effort, “This was a solid start to the season for both the boys and girls teams. Both teams were able to crack the top-5 for their respective divisions and there is still a lot of room for improvement from all the runners. I think we matched up well with the teams from our league and district. Now we can get a solid week of training in before we start our dual meet season on September 9”
The individual effort was there as well acoording to Jacob, “Individually this was the first time we had three individual place winners. In years past we would only get one individual to come home with a medal. This year we came home with three place winners. Freshmen Paige Mikesell and Alec Coval were able to place in the top-12 in their divisions while Claire Mikesell came away with the 14 place medal. All three runners had good races and were able to come from way back in the pack to earn spots in the top 15. First time runners Grant Climie, Harry McMillen, and Brandon Lacock did a very nice job managing their pace. It show a lot of maturity for the younger runners to hold back early in the race and then pick up the pace. They had some help from some of our veteran runners like Logan Gilbert and Malav Patel. Both of these returning letter winners did a nice job talking to the younger runners about what to expect in such a big race. On the girls side we saw the same thing from Nicole Chew, Emily Aveni and Kristi Fox.”
Complete results can be found here.
