Warsaw’s Alex Schrock, center, runs with Floyd Central’s Luca Cirincione and Bloomington South’s Joseph Zinkman at Saturday’s IHSAA Cross Country State Finals. Photo courtesy Lynn Murphy

By Mike Deak
InkFreeNews

TERRE HAUTE – It was a mudtastic type of day in Terre Haute for the IHSAA Cross Country State Finals on Saturday.

Rain all week on the layout at the Lavern Gibson Championship Course left the track muddy and slick for the boys and girls state championships. It was a championship run for Brebeuf’s boys and Columbus North’s girls, the Braves scoring 78 points to hold off Hamilton Southeastern’s 117 and Columbus North’s 136 in the title chase. The Bulldogs did have the state champion as Reese Kilbarger-Stumpff was able to navigate the mess to beat defending champion Izaiah Steury of Angola to the line at 15:22, a second better, for the individual title.

The Columbus North girls had 79 points to narrowly top Carmel’s 92 atop the girls title chase. Chesterton was well back in third at 221. Chatard’s Lily Cridge was the runaway winner in the girls race at 17:32, over 30 seconds better than Delta’s Nicki Southerland. Defending champion Karina James of Lowell was sixth at 18:30.

Warsaw had both of its teams in Terre Haute with a mixed bag of results.

The Warsaw girls were 17th overall, 12 points behind Northern Lakes Conference rival Northridge in 16th place. Joey Rastrelli led the Lady Tigers with a time of 19:39, good for 45th overall in the meet. Wini Barnett was next home at 20:06 for 79th overall. The remainder of the Lady Tigers all piled in shortly after one another, beginning with Ava Knight (21:04), Mikayla Mimnaugh (21:07), Regan Brouwer (21:10), Elizabeth Vander Bie (21:13) and Amanda Lusinde (21:56).

Other notables in the girls race included Penn’s Julie Smith in 17th place (19:09), the Kingsmen 12th and the East Noble team 20th.

For the Warsaw boys, it slipped down to 24th in the team ledger. Northridge was eighth, Goshen 10th and Penn 17th among area teams.

The Tigers had Garrett Hall, Luke Nier and Harrison Phipps all finish within 15 seconds of one another, Hall at 17:15, Nier at 17:18 and Phipps at 17:30. Tyler Swartz was next in at 17:47, followed by Alex Schrock (18:00), Andrew Potter (18:15) and Ryun Hoffert (18:40).

“We did a Ricky Bobby today,” started Warsaw boys head coach Jim Mills, who coached his final meet for Warsaw after four decades of coaching service. “If you’re not first, you’re last. The course was a soggy mess so times were slow. We had hopes of finishing closer to 20th instead of 24th. It didn’t work out but we were glad to be here. Our fifth runner was freshman Alex Schrock who had a great race even though conditions were rough. We’re very excited to see what he can do next year.”

The area had three runners place within the top 20 in Northridge’s Jack Moore, who was eighth, followed by Goshen’s Drew Hogan in 12th and teammate Cole Johnston in 18th.