“A-B-E hosted the first-ever home meet and we knew this was going to be a close boys’ race as Parkers Prairie has a good team,” commented Head Coach Robert Bosma. “The Suchy boys are great runners and pushed the race right from the start. This helped our runners to chase down. We often talk in practice about chasing down rabbits, runners that are in front that becomes our goal. The Panthers ended up giving out runners many of them. Because of this, every guy ended up running a PR for the season. Micah Fossell went down during the race with a leg injury, but he was able to get back up and push himself to finish. That is a testament to the heart he has and what this team is willing to do.”

Johnathan Suchy (17:11.99) and James Suchy (18:11.96) finished 1-2 for the Panthers.  Hunter Norby (18:27.37) of A/B-E was third, followed by Bertha-Hewitt’s Brady Rach (18:36.69) and Preston Miller (19:07.67) in fourth and fifth place, respectively.

“Another element to everyone doing so well is that there is a lot of competition to see who is going to run varsity each week,” noted Bosma. “We currently have 12 runners who are competing to be on the varsity team and they continue to run hard. Both the JV and Varsity races proved yet again that they are willing to push each other every race. As soon as Kian, and Jacob put together impressive times in the JV race, the varsity runners knew they had to step up the game. They did so by running in a pack and used each other to push themselves harder.”

Here are the rest of the individual boys’ results by team.
Ashby/Brandon-Evansville
6. Wes Siira 19:11.44, 8. Solomon Wales 19:20.43, Jayden Hoidahl 19:40.39, 12. Logan Froemming 19:58.40, 13. Micah Fossell 20:09.42, 14. Jaden Norby 20:13.38

Parkers Prairie
9. JasonKoehn 19:30.98, 11. Cole Steele 19:44.97, 15. Justin Koehn 20:36.95

Bertha-Hewitt
7. Aden Rach 19:18.66, 16. Chris Blashack 20:50.64, 17. Boston Johnson 20:59.71, 18. Isaac Blashack 21:02.70, 19. Zach Baumgartner 21:34.68

“As for the girls, many are still learning how to get comfortable while running, and they showed more of what they can do,” stated Coach Bosma. “Lucea Wales set a goal to drop over a minute of her time and she took the lead early in the race. She ran smart and easily achieved her goal. Courtney Brethorst was another individual who wanted to drop her time and took almost 5 minutes off her time. Instead of getting into a comfortable stride, she wanted to keep Lucea in sight and used that as motivation.”

Here are the individual girls’ results by team.

Ashby/Brandon-Evansville
1. Lucea Wales 23:19.18, 3. Courtney Brethorst 24:49.00, 5. Gretchen Bredberg 24:59.00, 8. Cailey Schlosser 28:10.00, 10. Katlyn Pattrin 29:02.00, 12. Emma Erickson 31:07.l00, 13. MiKenna Pattrin 31:13.00

Parkers Prairie
2. Kad Wehking 23:25.87, 4. Kendra Eggert 24:59.00, 6. Ashley Olson 27:31.00, 7. Hannah Shircliff 27:55.00, 9. Jasmine Wendt 28:33.00 

“Overall, it was a close meet, both being within 1 point (Parkers winning the guys and A-B-E winning the girls),” concluded Bosma. “We hope to take the momentum of both races into next week when we run at Wadena on Thursday.”