It was a day of near misses for the Wayland boys’ and girls’ cross-country treams at Saturday’s Division 2 regional meet at Portage.

Near-miss performances were turned in by Lady Wildcat senior Emily Gray and boys Jonathan Zuiderveen and Mitchell Hooker. Gray just missed qualifying for next Saturday’s state meet at Michigan International Speedway by taking 16^th place with a time of 20:45. Only the top 15 individual runners in the regionals get to go on to state.

The same held true for Zuiderveen, a senior who was 19^th in 17:31, and Hooker, who was 20^th in just three-tenths of a second more. Zuiderveen had qualifying for state last year. His time of 17:30.0 was just .3 ahead Hooker, had a giant PR, running a time of 17:31.03.

“This made him the second fastest freshman in the race, overall!” pointed out coach Raymond Antel III. I expect big things from Mitchell in the next three years!”

The Wayland girls were sixth in the regional meet with 154 points, just two behind fifth-place Hastings. Otsego won it with 21 points and placed seven of the top 15 runners.

Freshman Rylee Cronkright finished 20^th in 20:53.4, sophomore Zoe Antel was 25^th in 21:19.5, junior Kaitlyn Paul was 46^th in 22:21.4 and senior Emily Isenhoff 47^th in 22:22.5.

For the Wildcat boys, who finished 11^th, Ethan Killips was 67^th in 18:58.6, Gabe Attruia 76^th in 19:24.1 and freshman Ian Russell 86^th in 20:13.4.