By Fred Kroner
Kiara Jones won the girls’ Class 1A IESA sectional championship race at Casey-Westfield on Saturday (Oct. 17) by 21 seconds.
The seventh-grader’s 2-mile time was 12 minutes, 51.5 seconds.
Teammate Kamryn Soard, an eighth-grader, also secured a top-10 finish, ending 10th in a time of 14:27.5
The team’s other participants were: eighth-grader Madisyn Wilson (15th in 15:54.1), eighth-grader Loran Tate (20th in 16:55.5), seventh-grader Breanna McGarigle (21st in 17:24.2) and fifth-grader Clair Davison (23rd in 18:34.0).
In the team race, host Casey-Westfield was first with a composite score of 32 points. Runner-up Salt Fork had 36 points and Heritage was third with 56 points.
The meet was the final one of the season for all Illinois junior high cross-country programs.
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Jones and Soard secured top-five finishes for Heritage on Wednesday (Oct. 14) in the school’s final regular-season girls’ cross-country meet.
Jones was the winner of a three-school meet at Paxton, clocking a time of 13 minutes and 9 seconds. She was 1 minute and 58 seconds ahead of her closest pursuer.
Teammate Soard was fifth in 15:32.
The other Heritage competitors were: Wilson (12th in 17:24), Tate (15th in 18:14), McGarigle (16th in 19:37) and Davison (18th in 19:56).
PBL topped Heritage, 23-38, in the team standings. Tri-Point did not have enough runners to be scored as a team.
Villa Grove Junior High Boys’ Cross-Country
Villa Grove had two medalists and two other runners who produced their top times of the season on Friday (Oct. 16) in the Casey-Westfield Class 1A IESA boys’ sectional cross-country meet.
Kurt Zimmerman was the runner-up, completing the 2-mile course in 11 minutes and 53 seconds. The other VG medalist was fourth-place finishing Lukas Shadwick (11:59). Zimmerman and Shadwick are both eighth-graders.
The school’s other representatives were: seventh-grader Jackson Gilles (14th in 13:10), eighth-grader Chase White (17th in 13:38), eighth-grader Nolan Shadwick (24th in 14:31), fifth-grader Tucker McGarigle (25th in a personal-best 14:40) and sixth-grader Logan Hauersperger (27th in a personal-best 15:16).
Among fifth-graders who participated at the sectional in Casey, McGarigle was fifth.
Due to COVID-19 restrictions, the sectional race was the season-ending competition for all junior high programs in the state.
“It’s our fifth season having an official school junior high cross-country team,” coach Jim Kestner said. “We qualified our first runners for state in our second official season, 2017.
“Our 2018 girls’ squad broke the ice and qualified for state as a team by finishing in third place at their sectional that year. The boys have now done the same and became what would have been our first boys’ squad to qualify for state as a team. We may not have a state contest next weekend, but we have a lot to celebrate.”
