By Bruce Karnick

The final race of 2020 for both boy’s and girl’s cross country took place in Owatonna on Thursday, October 15th. 16 teams would compete for the boy’s section title and 17 for the girl’s section title. These awesome kids would travel 58.4 miles one way to run an additional 5000 meters. For those of us that don’t have the conversion memorized, that would be 3.107 miles. The boys, scheduled to run at 9:00, would be faced with running in 35-degree weather. The ladies had a little extra time to gain some height on the mercury as they competed at 1:00 that afternoon, but the Minnesota weather said “Nah bro, I’m good” and kept it nice and cool for the ladies at 45-degrees.

When scoring Cross Country races, runners earn one point per place. First gets one, twentieth gets 20 and so on. The score is a cumulative total of all 5 runners places, lowest team score wins. The boys section champion would be Lakeville South with a score of 51, Rochester Century would take second with 57 points. Hastings would come in at 12th with 322 team points according to the state meet results page. The top five finishers for Hastings by Journal math scored 325. That is still 12th place, so the three-point mistake means nothing.

The fastest runner on the boy’s side was Seth Hill from Rochester Century with a time of 16:24.07. Junior Tyler Bushinski would finish 34th with a time of 17:39.42. Senior Captain Nolan Meyers would finish 50th with a time of 18:08.36. To give you some insight into the close proximity of the 116 racers, Meyers would edge the 2 other runners by hundredths of a second. Meyers .36 and the other two runners .42 and .79. Senior Evan McGinnis finished 66th with a time of 18:27.60. Junior Thomas Seibenaler would finish 76th with a time of 18:43.98. Freshman Noah Quigley finished 99th with a time of 19:38.06, edging out fellow Raider, Sophomore Aaron Herber who finished 100th with a time of 19:40.87. Junior Alex Siebenaler was the final Raider to cross the finish line with a time of 20:08.45, placing 109th.

For the girls, Farmington would claim the section title with 30 points, followed by Lakeville South with 48. Hastings would finish in 15th with 416 points. The top runner on the girl’s side was Farmington Senior Anna Fenske. Fenske would finish the course in 17:35.04, nearly a full minute ahead of her second-place teammate. For Hastings, Senior Linnea Urban finished in 32nd with 20:32.95. Sophomore, Skylar Little Soldier finished 84th with a time of 22:41.70. Freshmen, Genevieve Lawson and Elise Atkins finished 98th and 99th with times of 23:26.90 and 23:29.23 respectively and Senior Brook Erickson would finish shortly after them in 103rd place with a time of 24:01.63. Freshman Emma Kelly finished 106th with a time of 24:39.14 and Sophomore Molly Caturia rounded out the day with 24:53.22 to finish 109th.

One thing is certain, Hastings has a plethora of wonderful kids that also happen to be pretty darn good athletes. These kids and coaches were so happy to be running this fall and their parents were happy to be there to support them, regardless of the outcome, they just wanted to be out there and be together. Yeah, it’s been said in each last article for the teams covered, but a huge thank you needs to go out to the kids, coaches and families for their support of The Journal through pictures, interviews, emailing stats and info for stories. Really guys and gals, I could not have done it without you, and you made it more than a job, you made it fun. All the best to our graduating runners and to the rest of you, we’ll see you next time!

2020 Boys Cross Country team, Front row: Evan McGinnis, Nick Kohn, Kyle Stoltz, Aiden Stoltz, Tommy Siebenaler, Alex Siebenaler, Parker McGinnis, Marcus Dahlen, Josiah Trost, Jackson Ashenbrenner. Back Row: Coach Sandkamp, Aaron Herber, Tyler Johnson, Ty Bushinski, Sam Rabaey, Craig Hartman, Nolan Meyers, Max Albertson, Noah Quigley, Coach Dewall. Photo by Bruce Karnick

2020 Girls Cross Country team, Front row: Carlee Kordosky, Molly Caturia, Linnea Urban, (Puppy Little Soldier), Brooke Erickson, Jordyn Doughty, Eve Lawson. Back row: Skylar Little Soldier, Emma Kelly, Elise Atkins, Autumn Audricula, Hannah Hoff, Lindsay Matthison. Photo by Bruce Karnick