JEFFERSON — The Perry boys and girls varsity were joined by both middle school programs Thursday for a run over the circuit used for the Greene County Invitational.
The Perry girls were ninth in a nine-team Class AA field. Denison-Schleswig won the event with 30 points, with Winterset second with 52 points and Algona third with 92.
D-S sophomore Ellie Mendlik and freshman teammate Raegan [sic] Anderson claimed the top two spots, in 20:44.88 and 20:53.38, respectively, with Winterset junior Layken Gurwell third in 21:03.5.
Sophomore Grace Stewart led Perry with a 15th-place finish as she crossed in a season-best clocking of 22 minutes, 42.78 seconds. Also scoring for Perry were junior McKinley Thompson (28:41.58), freshman Jacky Casteneda (28:42.29), junior Alejandra Rivera (28:44.31) and sophomore Darian McCord (29:19.97).
Kat Munoz (fr., 32:42.1), Andrea Cortez (jr., 33:19.02) and Alondra Avila (fr., 34:43.87) also competed for the Jayettes.
Winterset scored 35 points, with runners finishing 2-6-8-9-10, to easily win the boys Class AA meet. Nevada was second at 76 and Kuemper Catholic third at 87, with Perry edging Greene County, 240-250, for the eighth spot in a nine-team field.
Unlike girls track and cross country, where the underclassmen tend to prevail, in boys events it is often the upperclassmen who dominate, and such was the case Thursday. While only seven of the top 20 girls AA finishers were juniors or seniors, only six of the boys top 20 AA were finishers were not juniors or seniors.
Cooper McDermott of Creston, Curtis Harryman of Winterset and Chandler Hagen of Kuemper Catholic — all seniors — secured the three-fastest finishes, crossing in times of 16:56.24, 17:10.65 and 17:17.31.
Senior Morgan Holmstrom had the best Perry finish when he crossed 32nd in 19:36.38. Sophomore Emilio Gonzalez (21:13.49), senior Bradley Godwin (21:34.19), sophomore Jacob Prombo (21:51.15) and junior Gerardo Gonzalez (21:56.4) also scored for the Jays.
Others running the course for Perry were Fernando Catalan (sr., 21:57.45), Mario Cruz (fr., 21:59.1), Aaron Lockwood (so., 25:02.92), Luke Pfau (so., 25:41.01), Brody Kimrey (sr., 28:14.24), Brandon Ruiz (so., 28:21.39), Bladimir Roldan (sr., 30:00.08), Zach Mills (jr., 30:48.07) and Roger Jacobson (fr., 30:59.21).
The Middle School races were of two miles in length, with grade 7-8 runners on the course at the same time.
Greene County won the girls side with 42 points, with CMB a close second at 44. Winterset (64) was third, Perry (93) fourth and Ogden (109) fifth.
Molly Lutmer placed fifth overall to lead Perry with a time of 15:41.49, with Hannah Peterson 11th in 16:46.44. Sophia Prombo (21st, 18:59.31), Maria Izquierdo (27th, 21:26.23) and Bree Martin (29th, 23:03.66) also scored for the Jayettes, with Bailey Piper (24:31.85) and Taylor Eppert (24:41.23) also competing. The Perry girls MS team did not have any seventh-grade harriers in action Thursday.
CMB (52) won the boys side, with South Hamilton (63), Denison-Schleswig (67), IKM-Manning (109) and Perry (111) filling out the top five spots in an eight-team competition.
Chase Archer (11th) and Emanuel Cardenas (13th) were the top two Bluejays to finish, crossing in 14:42.49 and 14:50.19, respectively. Tony Burgos (15:39.55) was 25th, Hayden McFarland (15:43.58) 29th and Andrew Gallindo (16:18.39) 35th to account for the Perry scorers.
Kyle Lockwood (17:19.85), Collin Malmberg (18:20.04) and Calvin Sass (18:57.69) also ran for the Jays. Gallindo and Lockwood are seventh graders, the remainder of the squad are in grade eight.
