The Wayland girls’ varsity cross-country team scored its first invitational victory of the season Wednesday by finishing first in their own tournament.
The Lady Wildcats, who were runners-up in their other two invitationals earlier this month, won the seven-team competition with 34 points. Hamilton was second with 56 points, Allegan third at 60, Hopkins fourth at 61, Wyoming fifth at 155 and Martin and Fennville did not field five runners in order to record a team score.
The Wayland boys were fourth and Hopkins third in the eight-team field. Allegan won with 41, Hamilton had 42, Hopkins 73 and Wayland 78. The Vikings’ Todd Henley was individual medalist with a time of 17:25.81.
Wayland junior ace Rylee Cronkright, who also was runner-up in the first two invitationals this season, was individual champion with a time of 21:19.79, about 50 seconds faster than sophomore Bella Charon of Hamilton.
Senior Jasmine Fisher of Hopkins took third with a time of 22:20.95.
Four Wayland runners finished among the top five. Junior Gracie Hasse was fifth, sophomore Naomi Oosterhouse sixth, senior Zoe Antel eighth and freshman Haylee Jasinski rounded out the scoring in 16th.
Hopkins senior Laura Velderman finished 11th, Alyssa Beilby was 11th, Alexis Zalis 20th and Gracie DeZeeuw 24th.
Sophomore Sara Tyrell led Martin’s four runners in 18th, Esther Tyrell 40th, Zoie Tuinstra 46th and Amy Harris 50th.
Dan Rausch was second among the Vikings boys with a time of 19:40, good for ninth. Jake Pastoor was was 23rd, Joe Ludlam 29th and Jared Bowman 36th.
Ian Russell paced the Wildcats with a 12th-place finish and sophomore Elijah Gamelin was right behind him in 13th. Steven Mosher was 20th, Jarod Geerligs 24th and Andrew VanBaal 30th.
It was too bad Martin did not field a full team because it would have stacked up very well in the team competition. Sophomore Carsen Young was impressive in seventh place with a time of 19:24.45, teammate Kyle Pallett was 17th and freshman Eli Dykstra 26th.
