Barker leads Kimball to state cross country

The Kimball High boy's cross country team is headed to Kearney and the State Cross Country Championship Meet! With senior Brandon Barker leading the way, the Longhorns ran to a team third place finish and a qualifying spot as the top 15 individuals and top three teams from each district qualify to advance to the state meet, this Friday, at the Kearney Country Club Golf Course.

Along with the excitement of having the team qualify, this year was extra special with Barker winning the individual championship as well, leading from start to finish. Barker was a young man on a mission, and talk about peaking at the right time! As reported last week, he won both the SPVA and Western Trails Conference races, and now a District Title. His win left no doubt he was the top runner from the field of 82 registered runners from the 20 schools entered at the D-6 District held at the Bayard Golf Course. His winning time over the 5K course was 17 minutes and 21 seconds, a full 34 seconds faster than the second place runner, Alex Araujo of Bayard who ran 17:55. This means that Barker would have qualified for a return trip to the state meet as he qualified as an individual last year as a junior.

The Horns also had one other runner finish in the top 15 medal group as sophomore Zachery Wagner finishes in the 13th spot with his time of 18:43, and Wagner will also be making a return trip having qualified last year as a freshman. The tall, young blonde put on a tremendous finish to assure himself of a qualifying spot and in the sport of cross country, each and every finish by a team's runner counts toward the team score and plays a very important role in qualifying the team.

The winning team, Dundy County Stratton, scored 42 points, just one point ahead of runner-up Bridgeport with 43. Kimball tallied 53 points, seven points ahead of fourth place Perkins County with 60. For certain, the finish of the top four runners is so important, and even the finish of the number five and six runner, the limit of runners each team can have, can determine any possible ties.

All six Kimball runners ran well with sophomore Thomas Lenzen running 19th in 19:46, and junior Kaden Adrian 20th in 19:48 and these four places made up the Kimball final team score and in the sport of cross country, the lowest score wins. Senior Joel Evertson ran 27th in 20:07 and junior Garrett Pedersen ran 50th in the field of 79 finishers with a time of 21:46. Coach Tiffany Johnson said she was so proud of each and every one of her runners.

Coach Johnson said, "The boys were determined and really nervous to run on Thursday as they had set the goal of making it to state. They knew they were going to have to run one of their better races if they were going to accomplish this feat. They are exited to work hard this coming week to prepare themselves for the state meet. This is the first team in five years to qualify for state from Kimball. Coach Janicek and I couldn't be more proud of this group of young men."

Race time for the Class D boy's is noon, Kimball time.

NOTE: Zach Wagner and Joel Evertson will not run at the state meet as they had committed prior to the start of the season to attend the National FFA Convention which is also this weekend. Nicholas Thomas-Lewis will join the Kimball team for the state meet, giving them five runners instead of six, and again, the team score is based on the best four times of each team.