Five career-best times power Newton girls to seventh at Wartburg College

WAVERLY — Five career-best performances powered the Newton girls cross country team to a seventh-place finish at the Dan Huston/Steve Johnson Invitational on Saturday.

Audrey Muckler led the Cardinals and left Wartburg College with a medal as the Cardinals scored 222 points in seventh.

“It was a great team effort today. They went out and executed,” Newton girls head cross country coach Rachelle Tipton said.

Rochester Lourdes (Minnesota) won the girls’ team title in the varsity orange 5K competition with 71 points.

Class 1A No. 2 Earlham was the runner-up with 91 points, while Austin (Minnesota) also scored 91 points in third. The rest of the top five of the 15-team field featured Clear Lake (100) and Cedar Rapids Xavier (145).

Iowa Falls-Alden (168) was sixth followed by Newton (222), Waverly-Shell Rock (226), Davenport Assumption (234) and Osage (250).

“Davenport Assumption was assigned a start box next to us so it was nice to see that they, while they matched our team pretty well, would still be a good team to chase,” Tipton said. “To get all five scorers ahead of their third runner was huge.”

Muckler placed 13th in the girls’ 5K race with a career-best time of 20 minutes, 32.1 seconds.

Bella Winther was next for the Cardinals in 47th with a time of 22:39.4. Sarah Malow (22:43.2), Talia Friedman (23:03.5) and Alivia Kingery (23:13.6) all posted a career-best times in 51st, 62nd and 65th, respectively.

The non-scoring runners were Meghan Trout (24:00) in 80th and Laek Sullivan (25:29.7) in 91st. Sullivan’s varsity debut produced a career-best time.

“(Malow) did a great job leading the pack today and once again had a big push in the last part of the race,” Tipton said. “She was on fire. (Kingery) toughed out the last 600 meters and held off a Waverly-Shell Rock girl to secure the team’s seventh-place finish.

“(Sullivan) had a great varsity debut. In the middle of the race, she found herself in a bit of no-man’s land alone and showed great mental fortitude to keep plugging away and worked to reel in runners ahead of her by the end of the race.”

Class 2A No. 5 Scarlett Byrnes of Osage won the girls’ race in 18:51.5. Clear Lake’s Addison Doughan was the runner-up in 19:21.3.