Columbia City’s Bailie Brown leads the pack, with teammates Jasmine Early and Lillie Oddou along with Manchester’s Rae Bedke during action at the Tippecanoe Valley Cross Country Invitational Saturday morning. (Photos by Mike Deak)

AKRON – Lately, when it rains, it pours. Such was the case overnight Friday and into Saturday morning around the Tippecanoe Valley campus. Operating on a virtual wet sponge, Tippecanoe Valley hosted its 32nd annual cross country invitational. For teams from Columbia City and West Noble, the water wasn’t a problem.

City’s girls were utterly dominant while West Noble’s boys used some superior frontline efforts to claim team titles at the invite, which featured five waves of races. The day opened with boys and girls junior high races, boys and girls high school races, and the traditional coaches race.

City landed four of its runners in the top five, with only Manchester’s Rae Bedke breaking up a complete City sweep of the top four. Jasmine Early and Bedke broke out early and left the field behind, Early gaining separation on Bedke in the final third of the race to pull away for a 19:33 win. Bedke came home in second at 19:51, only for Lillie Oddou closing quickly at 19:58. Bailie Brown and Lauren Keller were fourth and fifth overall for the Eagles. Eden Oddou was ninth to wrap up the win for City, which scored just 22 points to runner-up Manchester’s 70 points.

Bailey Watkins and his Triton teammates take their first strides at the Tippecanoe Valley Cross Country Invitational.

West Noble put three of its runners in the top seven, led by the third-place run of Dakota Thompson (16:37) and fourth-place of Erick Contreras (16:46). Jordan Shoemaker was seventh, Justin Contreras was 10th and Dereck Vogel was 11th to seal the win for the Chargers, scoring 36 points to easily outdistance runner-up Columbia City’s 91 points.

Winning the boys race was Caston’s Mitchell Rans, who ran a 16:10. Pacing with Rans was Rochester’s Thomas Rohr, who kept up with Rans for much of the race before the Caston sophomore pulled away in the final 300 meters. Rohr came across the line at 16:16.

Host Tippecanoe Valley was 11th overall in the girls race and 13th in the boys race. Claudia Ramos led the Lady Vikings with a time of 25:13, Valeria Ramos one second back. Top Viking boys runner was Justin Peconga at 20:52.

Triton had the girls finish eighth and the boys 11th. Whytnie Miller continued her strong freshman campaign for the Lady Trojans with a time of 21:55, which was 17th overall in the race. Baylee McIntire was 19th in the team scoring at 22:10. Bailey Watkins was 20th overall for the Trojans at 18:24, running in stride with teammate Russell Reichard at the finish line.

Whitko didn’t enter a full team in either race, but had Logan Busz lead the boys with a time of 18:55 and Amanda Leppek pace the Lady Wildcats with a 25:27.

Lakeland Christian Academy had three individuals in the boys race, paced by Rye Stevens’ 21:56.