Kimball runners prepare for hilly Gothenburg course

Kimball cross country runners continue improving through three meets last week, beginning with Alliance. On Tuesday, Sept. 20 the athletes competed at the Scottsbluff meet.

Kimball’s team, consisting only of boys, competed against nearly 90 athletes from 12 area high schools and place two in the top ten.

Brandon Barker finished in third place with a run time of 17:39, while teammate Zachery Wagner finished tenth with a time of 18:36.

“Our athletes continue to improve each time out. They have been working hard and the last week they had a lot of great competition,” coach Tiffany Johnson said. “We will begin to see more of the schools that we will see in districts as the first few meets we ran against a lot of B and C schools.”

On Thursday, Sept. 22 the team was off and running again, this time in Ogallala where more than 170 boys from 19 schools competed.

Barker placed sixth with a time of 17:37, taking two seconds off his previous time while Wagner took 27 seconds off of his time of 18:36 to finish in 19th place at 18:09.

“We are excited to see how they compete this week at our meet in Gothenburg. We know we need to continue to work on hills as this seems to be the one thing that has caused them problems throughout the last few meets,” Johnson said. “The Scottsbluff course has a few hills and they finish going up hill where as the Ogallala course is super flat.”

Senior runner Joel Evertson improved on his time of 21:31 in Scottsbluff to 20:69 in Ogallala, as did Garrett Pedersen from 21:36 to 20:39. Alex Flores ran 28:08 in Scottsbluff and finished in 26:44 at Ogallala.

Junior High runners also competed at both races with Thomas Muldoon placing tenth for his 2K run in 12:08 at Scottsbluff.

Chantel Malson finished the Ogallala run in 13:48 for a twelfth place finish.

“When we run this week in Gothenburg the course is more hilly than previous courses that we have ran on, with the exception of maybe our own,” Johnson concluded.