Granberg, Goodrich lead the Hawks at Marawood CC meet
MARAWOOD CROSS COUNTRY
Prentice-Rib Lake senior Adam Granberg earned an honorable mention spot with a 20th-place finish in Thursday’s Marawood Conference cross country championships, hosted by the Phillips Loggers.
Granberg got one of the eight honorable mention spots with his time of 19:28.3 and helped the Hawks place seventh out of nine teams in the boys meet. He was fourth in last year’s meet, which, due to the pandemic, did not have the full field of squads that it had this time around.
The Hawks’ 162 points beat Edgar (251) and the incomplete team from Wisconsin Rapids Assumption. The host Loggers won the league title with 58 points, edging Athens by two. Auburndale won the sixth-runner tiebreaker to beat Marathon for third. Both teams had 85 points. Chequamegon (101) and Stratford (123) were fifth and sixth.
Freshman Jack Regier was 31st out of 60 runners in his first Marawood Conference race with a time of 20:00.2. Senior Will Hartke was 34th in 20:10.3, junior Ryan Buehler was 42nd in 20:35.2, junior Ben Petersen was 44th at 20:58.4 and freshman Elijah Scott was 45th in 21:04.6. Freshman Matthew Schmidt was 49th at 21:39.8 and senior Reese Isaacson came in 50th at 21:58.
All of the Hawks improved their times dramatically from the Sept. 7 Phillips Invite held on the Moonlight Lane course, which bodes well for the WIAA Division 3 sectional meet, which will also be held there this Saturday.
Also for the boys, Connor Highfill placed 17th out of 23 runners in the JV race at 23:25.3.
Marathon sophomore Jacob Smith, who finished ninth last year, won the boys individual championship with his time of 18:11.4, which beat Connor Gabay of Phillips by 3.1 seconds. Andrew Schaer of Athens was a distant third at 18:34.8. Rounding out the list of the eight first-team All-Marawood runners were last year’s runner-up Charles Jewell of Auburndale (18:40.6), Nathan Wolf of Athens (18:43.5), Brooks Kraus of Athens (18:45.5), Jaron Gage of Marathon (18:46.4) and Alex Nieto of Phillips (18:48.6).
In the girls race, Prentice-Rib Lake senior Kylee Goodrich earned the highest conference finish of her prep career, placing 28th in 24:09.4, which was her second- fastest time of 2021 and an improvement of about 2:26 over her Sept. 7 time at Phillips.
The Hawks had just three entrants in the varsity race. Senior JeAnn Johnson was 52nd in 27:17.4 and senior Lydia Holm was 56th in 29:33.7, improving by about 2:45 over her time here earlier in the year.
Sophomore Autumn Michalski and junior Claudia Lasiowski of Chequamegon were the top two individual finishers in 19:55.5 and 20:41.2, but Wisconsin Rapids Assumption won the team championship by placing its top six runners among the first 25 overall finishers. The Royals edged Marathon 56-59 in the team standings and Stratford wasn’t far behind with 63 points. Phillips was fourth with 98 points, three fewer than Chequamegon, and Edgar was sixth with 154. Auburndale and Athens joined Prentice-Rib Lake as incomplete teams.
First-team all-conference runners included third-place finisher Ainara Sainz De Ro of Assumption (20:48.1), Allie Adomaitis of Phillips (21:01.3), Jordyn Karl of Auburndale (21:30.7), Julianna Thurs of Marathon (21:48.3), Grace Dolan of As- sumption (21:51.1) and McKenna Zieher of Auburndale (21:52.2).
In the JV race, Prentice-Rib Lake’s Emma Orlandini was 27th in a seasonbest 28:56.8, Cristy Hartmann was 33rd in 30:09.2, Ryean Gorski was 34th at 30:13.9 and Amy Espinoza was 35th in a seasonbest 30:14.6. Marathon’s Kali Prihoda won in 24:57.2.
The Hawks will be back at the Moonlight Lane course for the WIAA Division 3 Phillips sectional, which starts with the boys race at noon. The top two teams in each race, plus the top five runners from non-qualifying teams will advance to the Oct. 30 state championship races in Wisconsin Rapids.
