Golden Hawks run at North Linn

Both the Mid-Prairie boys? and girls? cross-country teams continued their strong seasons over the weekend.

The Golden Hawk runners went to North Linn on Saturday, facing tough competition and claiming top-4 finishes in the team standings, with four top-10 individual finishes among the pair of squads.

On the girls? side of the meet, the Hostetlers continued their domination, with junior Anna breaking the 18-minute barrier with a 17:58 to claim first-place overall, while freshman Anna (18:15) finished in second.

Senior Greta Schmidt took 41st overall for Mid-Prairie (21:31) while freshman Abbagail Evans finished in 46th (21:37), sophomore Kessa Jones took 55th (21:52), freshman Kyleigh Graham finished in 77th (22:11) and sophomore Moriah Brace took 105th (23:22).

As a team, the Golden Hawk girls took third place among the 19 full teams in attendance, scoring 145 points, edged out by Solon (124 points), while meet champion Monticello finished with a score of 60.

?The girls continued a third straight meet of steady improvement and knocked off No. 4 ranked South Winneshiek and four other ranked teams in the process,? Mid-Prairie assistant coach Aaron Fleming said. ?South Winneshiek (fourth place) beat us handily a month ago, so to come back and beat them by 16 at this point in the season is a good mark of how far the girls have come.?

On the boys? side, the Golden Hawks rode a pair of top-10 finishes to take fourth place among the 23 teams in attendance with a score of 135, behind Ames (127), Marion (108) and Mt. Pleasant (78).

Individually, the Hawks were led by junior Peyton Miller, who took fourth place with a 16:33, while junior Zach Pettit finished in sixth overall with a 16:47.

Junior Floyd Evans finished in 16th (17:10), while senior Andrew Schwartz took 47th (17:51), senior Brent Foster claimed 62nd (18:13), sophomore Miles Burrows notched 109th (19:09) and sophomore Samson Kimani took 118th (19:27).

?We held two varsity guys out to keep them fresh for the postseason, and Miles Burrows and Samson Kimani got their varsity debuts. Both handled the pressure in fine style,? Fleming said. ?Miles ran a (personal best) by 10 seconds while Samson (ran a career-best time) by nearly a minute.?

Mid-Prairie will run next at their conference meet on Thursday night, when they go to the Iowa City Kicker?s soccer park in Iowa City.