Fatima’s girls’ cross country team earned sixth place among 34 teams in the Blue Division of Saturday’s Gans Creek Classic.

“Our girls team ran great, with our returning girls averaging just over 52 seconds faster than a season ago,” said Coach Marc Bridges. “The girls made up a staggering 172 places from the 1000m to the 5000m.”

Anna Rakestraw made up the most places, passing 53 runners. I think this statistic shows that the girls are running the second half of the race really well, looking for opportunities to improve their position.” 

Brie Massman (3, 19:54) and Heidi Struemph (14, 20:36) led the way, earning medals in the packed field. “Heidi, Brie, and Melissa Verslues (53, 22:01) were very close to their state times from last year, which is exciting as we still have a good portion of the season to improve,” said Bridges. “Karly Bock (114, 23:42) and Reagan Bock (129, 24:21) ran a really good race in their second viewing of the Gans creek course this year. Our freshmen, Jaidyn McCann (157, 25:46), Rose Backes (174, 28:00), and Journey Markway (181, 30:44), had big improvements from our race on the course two weeks ago.”

In the boys’ race, Fatima finished 17th as Michael Gabelsberger was 18th individually in 17:02.

“Michael was our only medalist in a field of over 300 runners,” said Bridges. “As a team, the boys weren’t as dominant in pushing the pace in the second half of the race as the girls’ team, but Zach Kloeppel passed 67 runners, and Trenton Kampeter passed 69 from the 1K to the 5K. Part of the reason the boys weren’t as strong in the second half was because I asked them to push a faster pace through the first mile than we have so far this season. The strategy cost the boys’ team as we were a bit slower overall than we were a few weeks ago on the same course. We will take the results of the race and use the data we collected to improve our workouts and race strategies as we move into the second half of the season.”

Wyatt Dake crossed second for the Comets at 18:03 for 65th place, followed by Zach Kloeppel (126, 19:06), Trenton Kampeter (135, 19:16), Zack Eisterhold (166, 19:37), Tucker Schroeder (270, 21:36), Mason Huhn (279, 21:50), and Ben Luebbert (296, 22:48).