Cross Country Teams Climb the Hills,

Jump the Bales for First-Place Finishes

On a day that finally brought weather conditions that cross country teams look for in the fall, the WMC  teams headed to Fremont Saturday for the challenging and entertaining Hill and Bale Invitational.

This course features 18 hay bale jumps so times are not usually fast, add in some mud and standing water and the 2018 edition was about staying mentally engaged in what was coming at you on the course today.

Boys Recap: Coach Gould; "I felt like our experience of being at this meet last year paid off with our win in the small school division today. The boys had seen this unique course before, so they just concentrated on competing and battling for every place today. We talked about what we needed to do to win today and they went out and executed."

"The team's depth against schools primarily for our same tournament classification showed today as we had 6 of the 15 medalists. We were lead by Jack Zuidema (3rd) and Eli Rotman (4th), followed closely by Ben Garretson (11th), Pierce Newell (12th) and Tyler Gould (13th). Dan Plaisier (15th) battled the whole race to score the last individual medal. Caleb Croff (17th) completed our Varsity seven today. David Clausing (31st) had a strong run in the JV race today, so we were running well in all our races today."

Girls Recap: Coach Aardema; "The girls were the fifth race of the day and we wondered if the course had deteriorated from the previous races. Other than the mud and water being a bit deeper, the hale bales were holding shape and we looked forward to getting the opportunity to see a couple teams that were ahead of us at last year's Regional."

"The girls came to compete today and almost from the start we had three girls in the front of the race and our 4th and 5th runners were in great position. Abby VanderKooi (1st, new girls course record) continued her strong season with the win, followed by Josie Aardema (2nd), and the race of the day was Ava Rotman (3rd), Sarah VanderKooi (5th), Natalie Riksen (17th) and Chloe Kozal (52nd) completed our Varsity runners today."