Newton girls improve on home course at LHC meet

Competing in the Little Hawkeye Conference is never easy. And with four ranked teams spread out over three different classes, this year’s girls cross country conference meet was very difficult.

While the Newton girls finished seventh in the seven-team field, four runners improved their times significantly from the team’s home meet back in late September.

That’s a good sign for the Cardinals as they head into the final weeks of the season.

“This is a stacked conference so while the goal was to edge out Oskaloosa, it was good to see the scoring gap close significantly from the meets earlier this season and to see so many time improvements from our home meet in September,” Newton head girls cross country coach Rachelle Tipton said.

Newton scored 173 points in seventh place, but Audrey Muckler was just one spot off a medal and all-conference honor.

Muckler was 16th in the girls’ 5K race at Maytag Park. Her time of 20 minutes, 50.5 seconds was 48 seconds faster than the time she posted on her home course in September.

Class 3A No. 1 Pella won the LHC girls title with 22 points. The Lady Dutch placed their five scoring runners in the first eight positions and all seven were in the top 22.

Class 4A No. 10 Dallas Center-Grimes finished second with 40 points, while 4A No. 14 Indianola (83), Norwalk (120) and 2A No. 7 Pella Christian (132) completed the top five. Oskaloosa finished sixth with 158 points.

“The right ingredients were there — cool weather, great competition and home course advantage. It was just a matter of executing and the team did that,” Tipton said.

The race featured the No. 1 ranked runners in both 3A and 4A and 12 ranked harriers in all.

The top 15 finishers in each varsity race earned a medal and all-conference honors. Muckler was 16th and finished 2 seconds back of the final all-conference spot.

“(Muckler) just missed out on all-conference honors, but she ran a gutsy race to work up and be in the fight for it,” Tipton said. “Seeing that huge improvement from September on this tough course should be a confidence boost for next week.”

Bella Winther was next for Newton in 34th. She finished in 22:54.2. Sarah Malow was 38th in 23:16.6, Talia Friedman (23:19.8) was 41st and the final scoring runner was Alivia Kingery (23:59.1) in 44th.

Meghan Trout (24:11.5) placed 46th as a non-scoring runner and Laek Sullivan (24:41.9) led the JV runners in 45th.

Malow’s time was more than 100 seconds faster than the time she posted in September. Friedman improved her time by 36 seconds and Kingery also was 16 seconds better.

Sullivan’s career-best time on Monday was more than 3 minutes faster than her time in September.

“The athletes in the JV race were in the zone today,” Tipton said. The four freshmen have bright futures in this sport and (senior) Lex (Dirksen) came out and fought hard through her last home meet.”

Class 3A No. 1 Marissa Ferebee of Pella won the girls’ 5K race in 17:55.2. Class 3A No. 3 Elise Brenneman of Pella was the runner-up in 18:26.9.

Class 4A No. 1 Piper Messerly of Dallas Center-Grimes finished third in 19:02.9.

Notes: The Iowa High School Girls Athletic Union released its cross country assignments on Wednesday. The Cardinals will return to Pella for their state qualifying meet on Oct. 23. The ranked teams are No. 1 Pella, No. 4 Fort Madison and No. 10 Winterset. The rest of the field includes Oskaloosa, Bondurant-Farrar, Washington, Knoxville, Des Moines Hoover, Fairfield, Keokuk and Saydel.