Whitewater headed to West Allis to compete in the 52nd annual Bulldog Invite hosted by West Allis Central on Friday, September 1st at McCarty Park. Under sunny skies with temperatures around 80 degrees and a mild breeze, the Whippets performed very well rubbing elbows with schools much larger than ours. Nearly all the athletes ran faster than they did a week ago at Alumni!
In the girls’ varsity race, the team was once again led by Mady Hefty who started a little back in the field but sliced her way to a 25th place finish with a season best time of 21:51 and finished with a medal. Athena Soto, Carley Boudreau, and Nola Coburn packed up nicely gaining confidence together, and rolled through the course to finish in 45th, 47th, and 48th places, respectively. Their times were 22:42, and a tie at 22:57 for both Carley and Nola in a battle to the finish line. Lauren Buehler and Silvia Harris ran solid races to finish in 82nd and 83rd. They stopped the clock at 25:38 and 25:42. Isabella rounded out the 7 varsity runners by placing 98th in 27:28. Overall the team finished 10th out of 14 complete teams. The JV team was led by Sami Van Daele to place 50th in 26:39. The JV team placed 8th overall out of 14 complete teams.
The boys’ race featured Jack Hefty sharing the lead with another runner for much of the race before both boys were overtaken by the eventual winner. Jack blitzed to the finish to outkick his opponent and place 2nd overall with a time of 16:54. Nate Holden placed 10th in 17:36. Xavier Zei came across as the team’s third runner to take 21st in a time of 18:28. Miles Nickelsburg rounded out the medalist for the team by placing 29th in 18:46. Quincy Boudreau came across the line in 68th with a time of 20:11 for a big improvement from last week. The final varsity runner was Onyx Thompson in 87th with a time of 20:50. The varsity team placed 3rd overall with 17th complete teams. In the JV race, Andrew O’Toole led the team with a top 10 finish to take 9th with a time of 20:02. Wyatt Esch secured a medal by placing in the top 30 with a new personal best of 20:52 and placed 24th. The JV team finished in 7th with 18 complete teams in this event.
The team will take a week off from racing next week to get some good practices in before lacing up their spikes again to compete in the Marshall Invite on Tuesday, September 12th.
Full results can be found here: http://milesplit.live/meets/563696
Article Submitted by Chad Carstens
Whitewater High School Head Cross Country Coach
ccarstens@wwusd.org
Photo Courtesy of Jeff Hefty
