Raiders have tough day in Marion

MARION — As far as the team standings go, it was a tough day of racing for the Williamsburg cross-country runners Thursday in the 2023 WaMaC Conference championships.

  Buy Photo

The Raider girls, ranked 11th in Class 2A, had one top-15 finisher and totaled 158 points to place sixth behind 3A No. 4 Mount Vernon-Lisbon (58), 3A No. 5 Solon (69), 3A No. 16 Marion (88), unranked Center Point-Urbana (109) and 3A No. 6 Clear Creek Amana (133).

Despite not placing as high as they wanted, Williamsburg Coach Nick Nordheim was far from disappointed by his team’s performance.

“Although we want to be competing for titles, I thought the girls ran really well overall,” Nordheim said, noting that his all-stater, senior Zada Buchholtz, was nursing a sore calf muscle and missed the meet.

“We got beat by some really good teams,” Nordheim said. “I thought we took another step forward with our pack and had some girls fill in nicely for Zada.”

Freshman Edie Axmear, as she has all season, led the Raiders, placing 12th out of 77 runners over the 5K course in 20:52 to earn second-team all-conference honors.

“Edie continues to get better and better,” praised coach Nordheim. “She just missed first team all-conference, which is pretty amazing in the WaMaC.”

Freshman Makenna Capper and sophomore Ashlynn Hoffman received all-WaMaC recognition, placing 30th and 31st, respectively, in 21:45 and 21:51.

Junior Lillyona Abernathy, sophomore Anya Rivera and senior Reagan McMenomy came in 41st, 42nd and 43rd in 22:24, 22:35 and 22:47.

Williamsburg’s boys failed to put any runners in the Top 25 and placed ninth with 197 points.

Class 3A 13th-ranked Solon was the conference champion with 85 points, holding off 3A No. 6 Mount Vernon-Lisbon (87) and 3A No. 11 Clear Creek Amana (98)

Sophomore Nile Busch was the first Raider to cross the finish line and the only one to break 18 minutes, placing 27th in 17:47.

Tyler McMillin was 36th in 18:07, Wes Hulseberg 40th in 18:16, Colin Reed 43rd in 18:20, Hayes Arwine 50th in 18:3.

Busch and McMillin were all-WaMaC recognition.

“This was probably our worst race of the year overall as a team,” said Nordheim. “We had some individuals run really well, but we should have been competing for top 5 in the conference,” he said.

“We’ve have had a lot of great races and have trained really hard, so I know we'll be back strong next week (at the state qualifier), but today wasn't our day.”

Individual champions in the varsity competition were Marion’s Addison Dabroski, a sophomore, in 19:34, and MV-L junior Grady Olberding in 16:13. Olberding was one of eight guys to break 17 minutes.

Junior varsity

Williamsburg’s JV girls and boys both finished sixth in the team standings.

Devin Busch posted a top-10 finish for the boys, placing eighth in 19:01, and Kaitlyn Snow led the girls, finishing 41st in a personal best 25:11.

“The guys went out and competed really hard to finish out their season, and the girls did the same,” said Nordheim. “I thought Kaitlyn was amazing in her last race as a Raider. It was a tough day to run a personal best with the wind, but she was ready.”

Senior Cady Campbell also ran her last race.

“Cady has improved so much over her two years on the team and she's been a great leader for us,” Nordheim said.