Wellington, KS — It was a beautiful morning for Goddard Cross Country as we participated in our second meet of the season! Wellington is a much different course with more inclines and hills in comparison to ClearWater. Going into this meet us coaches felt like we had a very solid week of practice and have liked what we have been seeing out of the team. Our focus this week in practice included hill work and an Indian run to promote team work and unity on race day. Wellington presented a new and exciting challenge for our runners with the inclines and hills and we were anxious to see how our training this week would pay off. Link to Official Race Results https://milesplit.live/meets/704013 Link to Photos (This will be updated once I have the link and photos are shared. Keep checking this article and it will be updated ASAP. THANK YOU, BEN POVALL!) Looking at our race results and accomplishments today there are a lot of highs to take away, but also a lot of results leaving us coaches a little puzzled and eager to get back to work with the team. Let’s start with the highs! Our Boys team and our Girls team both took 2nd place overall as a team! On the boys side we were within 8 points of Pratt and on the girls side Pratt was just on a different level, but we placed 4 girls in the top 20 with a medal and competed for a 2nd place finish as a team! Looking at our Top 5 runners points for boys we scored 4-6-7-8-12 and for our girls we scored 7-8-9-11-12. I was EXTREMELY pleased with how our Boys and girls stayed together as a TEAM. It was so encouraging to see the hard work from practice on our Indian run translate to race day. I am extremely excited to see how we can continue to evolve this aspect of racing for both our boys and girls team. When we have runners who work together as a team on race day it can have a major psychological impact on fellow competitors when they see a sea of blue running by. This mindset and togetherness is how we will be successful as a team moving forward. We are a young program with so much potential still waiting to be unlocked and today was a great sign of things to come this season and in the future. We had a total of 10 medal winners who placed in the Top 20 both boys and girls! Girls Medals 1. Annelise Madison 14th 2. Brooklyn Jones 16th 3. Giselle Avitia 18th 4. Autumn Weaver 20th Boys Medals 1. Levi Brownell 5th 2. Benji Kouns 7th 3. Harlan Harkman 8th 4. Gavin Weaver 9th 5. Eli Griffith 14th 6. Cooper Stelling 17th We had a total of 9 Personal Records/Season Bests! 1. Benji Kouns 20:14 PR (Beat 20:48) 2. Cooper Stelling 21:13 PR (Beat 21:28) 3. Connor Howard 25:24 PR (Beat 25:31) 4. Cole Bennington 24:23 SB (Beat ClearWater Time) 5. Wesley Ondimu 25:37 PR (Beat 26:25) 6. Zach Liedl 25:46 PR (Beat 26:27) 7. Chase Culver 26:47 PR (Beat 26:59) 8. Ava Mantanona 28:18 (Beat 28:28) 9. Isla Block 31:34 (Beat 31:43) 1st Race this Season 1. Ethan Stephenson and Drake Maples both completed their first race on the season and will look to improve next week at Buhler. There were a lot of great accomplishments from Wellington stated above. We RACED WELL AND COMPETED AT A HIGH LEVEL, but we did not in my opinion RUN WELL WITH OUR TIMES. We had a total of 9 personal records/season bests on the day and going into the meet we were hoping for that number to be much higher with a majority of runners beating their ClearWater time and setting a new season best. There could be a lot of factors as to why this was not the case: tougher course, football game the night before, not enough fluids, maybe we trained too hard this week, etc. Us coaches will discuss and come up with a game plan moving forward to help everyone continue to improve. Lions if you did not run a season best today I hope that makes you even hungrier moving into next week to beat your time at Buhler. The desire and heart to want to push the limits and be the best version of yourself as a runner is what it is all about. We are eager to continue to embark on the journey alongside you and break down those walls on race day and run quicker times. With Wellington completed the Lions eyes are now set on Buhler next week on Thursday! Buhler will prevent an extremely challenging test for the Lions as we will be racing and competing against top level schools in the State of Kansas. Buhler is historically a tough meet for our team helping us prepare for our home meet at Lake Afton and post season competition. GO LIONS!