A slight breeze at times coupled with an increasing afternoon, post-rain humidity led to near bearable conditions for 110 girls and 117 boys who competed in the Athens Academy Invite.
The cross country runners from 11 schools harnessed their energy for a few trudging moments along grassy inclines, a slippery tunnel, a brown lake, a gut wrenching toughness testing hill, and a once around the inside oval.
The Tallulah Falls School girls placed fourth while the boys placed seventh. Jenna Chesser lead all Indian placers (sixth), followed by Haygen James (17th), Josie Chesser (18th), and Maggie Shelton (21st). Dani Prince (36th) rounded out the top five female Tribe scorers.
Carsyn Griffis placed 41st in her inaugural 3k race – a stellar accomplishment! James (over two minutes), Shelton (over 4 minutes) and Mallory Higgins all improved on the same course from a year ago.
Jasmyn Marshall ran a negative second half split in her initial scurrying that long of a distance – a quite dandy feat that the majority of the team achieved.
TFS boys scorers included Blair Moore (22nd), QianFeng William Xu (33rd), Timothy Beck (55th), Henry Rickman, and Dalton Geltz. Xu, Beck, and Gelts are XC newcomers who ran very well for their initial 3k races. Both Moore and Beck negative split their race halves while Rickman knocked off a minute and a half from last year’s AA course time.
Meet results girls: https://ga.milesplit.com/
Meet results boys: https://ga.milesplit.com/
Next meet: Thursday, August 29th at Chestatee War Eagle Invite
