Cross Country Champions
Madalyn Roche, Amber Huser, Ella Hein, Greta Hein, Karly Jaynes, Meg Katzung and Faith Dillman show the championship trophy. (Photos submitted)
Karly Jaynes surges past a Darlington runner.
PdC girl harriers are River Valley Invitational champions
The Prairie du Chien girls cross country team had another incredible race day on Saturday to win the River Valley Blackhawk Invitational.
The girls came out on top of the field of 20 small-school varsity teams. Prairie du Chien earned 65 points to edged out fellow conference team, Lancaster, by just 5 points.
Amber Huser led the girls team to finish in 6th. Freshman Meg Katzung took 13th, followed closely by Karly Jaynes and Greta Hein in 14th and 16th places, respectively. All earned medals for their top 20 finishes.
Ella Hein finished strong in 21st place, beating Lancaster’s 5th runner. Faith Dillman and Madalyn Roche also ran well to round out the varsity team.
In cross country, the top 5 runners score points for the team according to their place. Low score wins. The 4th and 5th runners are really important to a team score, because if they fall behind, points can really rack up.
“We aren’t used to being the team to beat and it can be intimidating, especially at a meet with almost 1,500 runners. The girls remained calm and focused,” said Coach Kathleen Hein. “It was different to hear other teams keeping track of our runners. Amber is a great runner. I can always count on her to be one of the leaders, but what was amazing was our 2-5 ran most of the race as a pack. At one point, I could see the Darlington coaches just shake their heads when they realized that all 5 PdC runners had already passed.”
Kendall Hill and Harlee Eastman each competed well in the JV girls race. Kendall ran a personal record and Harlee took almost 6 minutes off her time from last year on the course.
The varsity boys team finished in 18th place with 435 points. Blake Bartels led the varsity team to finish in 58th place with a time a minute and a half faster than last year’s time. Jayce Sexton, Charlie Eastman, Collin Seeley, and Brady Bartels also all ran strong, either earning personal records or taking time off of their previous time on the course.
