Sigourney jumps head on into cross country season

The Savages faced some of their toughest competition in the first week of the cross country season when they ran against schools of various calibers at the Trojan Early Bird Invitational on August 23, hosted by Iowa City West. Five total boys’ teams and eight girls’ teams took to the University of Iowa’s Ashton Course on a perfect day for competition.

A couple seniors on the girls’ squad put together some good times after running in the middle of the pack for much of the race. Summer Barthelman led the group of Lady Savages up until around the 2-mile mark where Lainey Graff kicked it into gear. Graff was the first from Sigourney to finish, taking 57th place with a time of 26:37.1. Barthelman was next to finish for Sigourney with a time of 27:41.7, taking 81st place.

Alyssa Landgrebe was the next Lady Savage to finish in 113th place with a time of 29:41.9 and Morgan Clubb finished in 127th place with a time of 31:16. Other Lady Savages to run included Megan Stuhr (34:41.5) finishing in 149th place and Bree Atwood (35:56.8) was the final Sigourney girl to finish at 165th place.

In total, the Lady Savages wound up taking eighth place out of the eight teams in the field.

“I think we ran the times we would anywhere at this point,” Sigourney coach Andy Harter said. “Usually in cross country it doesn’t really matter how big a school the competition is.”

The boys saw a little bit more success, but they still placed fifth out of the five teams competing in the Varsity race. Leading the way was Mason Moore who ran a time of 18:59.3, taking 16th place. Behind him was Tristan Bell who made a big push in the second half of the race, ending up in 28th place with a time of 20:24.2.

Other boys to compete for Sigourney included Dawson Webster (22:46.8) who finished 38th, Jake Ives (22:47.8) who finished 39th, Trace Bell (23:35.2) who finished 40th and Colton Schwab (26.27.3) rounded out the field in 42nd place.

“I just wanted to where our boys were at with it being a different team than last year,” Harter said. “Some of our guys really had some fight in the end and kicked it in, which I liked.”

The next competition for Sigourney will be down in Ottumwa at Wildwood Park on August 30 where they will run against other SICL schools and Pekin.