Boys cross country wins in Hamilton, girls second

The Columbia Falls girls took second and the boys took first at the Hamilton Cross Country Invitational last week.

The boys put six runners in the top 20, which put them well ahead of Corvallis for the title.

Brothers Logan and Luke Peterson took seventh and eighth place respectively, with times of 17:31 and 17:33.

Oliver Kress was 12th, Quinn Clark 14th and River Blazejewski was 18th to round out the scoring for the Wildcats.

The girls took second to Corvallis by just three points.

They were led by Ashley Andrews, who took fifth with a 20:47, followed by Mya Badger, who took 10th.

Ally Sempf, Marissa Schaeffer, and Cora Hannan took 12th through 14th to round out the scoring for the Cats.

The teams travel to Helena for the 7 on 7 meet Thursday and then wrap up the regular season in Polson Saturday with the Mission Shadows Duel.

The divisional race is the following weekend in Stevensville and the state meet is close to home — in Kalispell at Rebecca Farm on Oct. 21.

“On the girls side, Corvallis and Columbia Falls are both fighting for state trophies in a couple of weeks,” coach Jim Peacock said. “It was a great meet to see how we match up and to see where we need to improve. In the boys’ race, we were trying to use our teammates to pace in groups for the early portions of the race. 

“The kids worked together really well, and they ran strong. We’re getting closer to the state meet, and I like how the kids are running right now.  We got a couple areas to improve our racing, and we have a couple spots to try and shore up a few extra team points, so we’ll keep working on improvements in the next couple races.”

The Helena race is a fun format, Peacock noted, because they don’t get to run with teammates.  Each varsity kid runs in a separate race.  This will be interesting, because our varsity kids have spent most of the season keying off each other, but now everyone has to trust their own pace and instincts, he said.

“We only take seven boys and seven girls to Helena, so the rest of the team will race in Polson on Saturday. 

“The top JV kids will get their opportunity to represent Columbia Falls as our varsity squad there,” Peacock said.