The Southeast Valley’s toughest opponent at the Twin Lakes Conference meet, may have just been the strong south breeze that all the teams faced on Thursday, October 17^th in Emmetsburg. While great times were sparse amongst all the runners, five Jaguars were able to battle to season PRs. They were Hailey Rees (31^st, 25:41), Abbi Tucker (50^th, 30:02) and Amelia Christensen (55^th, 31:54) for the girls and Logan Bintz (30^th, 20:51) and Caden Kaltschnee (4^th-JV, 21:45) in the boys’ race.

               In the team standings, the boys were able to claim 5^th place overall with 128 points while the girls were 6^th with 143 points, two points behind host Emmetsburg. Sioux Central swept both team races scoring 42 points in the boys race and winning the tie -breaker in the girls’ race with Alta Aurelia; both teams finishing with 42 points as well. Manson NW Webster took second with 58 points. East Sac’s Boys team and SCC’s girls team took 3^rd place honors respectively.

               Lincoln Akins once again led the Southeast Valley boys’; finishing in a heartbreaking 16^th place overall in a time of 19:33 missing all-conference honors by five seconds. Owen Nuss was the second Jaguars to cross the finish line in 20:28 to take 25^th place. Carver Peterson (28^th, 20:47), Logan Bintz, Drew Dorsey (34^th, 21:09), Ethan Tucker (42^nd 21:26) and Kyeo Augustine (44^th, 21:45) made up the scorers for the boys’ varsity team.

               In the girls’ race, Katie Field overcame a fall in the start of the race to be the first Jaguar to finish. She ran a 24:54 to finish 24^th. Autumn Jones-Popp (29^th, 25:35), Hailey Rees, Brooke Peterson (32^nd, 25:56), Meia Hefley (37^th, 26:58), Abbi and Amelia made up the top 7 scorers for the Southeast Valley girls.

               While competing in the same race as the varsity boys, Southeast Valley also had seven runners compete in the JV division. Caden Kaltschnee, Grant Farnham (9^th, 22:43), Carter Ganoe (12^th, 23:26), Oliver Riehl (15^th, 25:23), Ben Wanat (18^th, 26:51), Evan Kuhn (20^th, 27:29), and Kaleb Klein (22^nd, 32:41).           The JV team finished 3^rd overall in the team race.

               The varsity teams will compete at least one more time this year. They run in the class 2A state qualifying meet on Thursday, October 24^th in Pella. Girls race is at 4:00pm, the boys race is at 4:40pm. The top three teams and top 15 individuals will qualify for the state cross country meet in Fort Dodge on Saturday, November 2^nd.