Hawks fly through Chequamegon’s cross country course

PRENTICE-RIB LAKE CROSS COUNTRY

The Prentice-Rib Lake Hawks found the course to be a friendly one Saturday as they set season-best times across the board in a five-team meet hosted by Chequamegon.

The boys finished third in a tight competition among the top three teams. While totaling 58 points, the Hawks were just behind Chequamegon (45) and Ashland (51). Crandon was a distant fourth with 83 points and Butternut had just one runner.

Kylie Orysen led the four-member girls team with a fifth-place finish out of 28 runners.

Orysen, a freshman, wasn’t far from a top-three finish. Her time of 21:24.5 was a season-best by about 1:23 and put her just behind fourth-place Addison May of Crandon (21:13.4) and third-place Claudia Lasiowski of Chequamegon (21:10.4). Chequamegon standout Autumn Michalski easily won the race in 18:43.2, 1:06.1 ahead of Ashland’s Adeline Bauer. Ory-sen was well ahead of sixth-place runner Caitlynn BeBeau of Butternut (22:02.1).

Sophomore Lauren Schutt was 25th for the Hawks in 28:35.8, beating her previous best time by 2:10. Senior Emma Scott was 26th in 29:48.2, dropping to her new best time by 2:07, and sophomore Amy Espinoza was 27th in 31:47.4, knocking 1:45 off her previous best time of the young season.

Chequamegon won an extremely close team battle, scoring 40 points, one point ahead of Crandon and Ashland with Crandon winning the sixth-runner tiebreaker. The Hawks and Butternut (one runner) were incomplete.

Freshman Kaleb Scott continued to show he’s a strong addition to the boys team as he finished fifth out of 48 runners in 18:24, 10 seconds ahead of senior teammate Ryan Buehler. Sophomore Jack Regier wasn’t far behind with an eighthplace time of 18:43.6. Scott dropped 1:24 from his last race in Phillips on Sept. 6, Buehler was 31 seconds faster than he was at the Marathon Invite on Sept. 1 and Regier cut 67 seconds off his Phillips time.

Evan Lord was 19th for the Hawks, just missing a sub-20 time at 20:00.5, while Matthew Schmidt was 20th at 20:04.8. Lord cut nearly two minutes off his previous best time recorded four days earlier at Phillips. Elijah Scott was 23rd in 20:24 and Eliah Harding was the team’s seventh man, taking 27th in 21:04.1, one spot and 0.4 seconds ahead of senior teammate Ben Petersen.

Nolan Sarkkinen was 31st in 21:19.9, Connor Highfill was 39th at 22:55.2 and Nick Nikkila was 47th at 30:38.4, dropping 2:15 from his previous best time posted at Timm’s Hill on Aug. 25.

Crandon sophomore Taylor Karcz wasn’t challenged while winning the race in 16:34.5. Ashland’s Dylan Uitto was second in 18:07.1, just ahead of Chequamegon’s Aiden Miesbauer (18:13) and Ashland’s Tristan Blancarte (18:18.5).

The Hawks are at Wausau East’s Smiley Invitational on Saturday. The first race is set for 8:30 a.m. That starts a busy stretch of the schedule that includes meets at Barron Tuesday, Spencer on Sept. 22 and Flambeau on Sept. 24.

The Prentice-Rib Lake boys won Saturday’s middle school meet 24-33 over Chequamegon. Henry Regier won it in 12:56.2, Hagan Isaacson was second in 13:18.8, Jeremy Wiitala was fifth at 14:08 and Jackson Schutt was sixth at 14:12.

Molly Adams led the girls with a sixth-place time of 16:50.5. Elsa Schuetz (17:52.7) and Ella Orysen (17:59.3) were 11th and 12th.