Lakers sweep top spots at first jamboree

Manistee News Advocate
Wednesday, September 5, 2012

WALKERVILLE — The Bear Lake cross country team kicked off competition in the West Michigan D League in familiar fashion by sweeping the top spots in a jamboree at Walkerville on Wednesday.

The Bear Lake girls and boys both won while John Girven and Keena Gilbert took the top spots individually.

“They did well,” said Bear Lake coach Tony Shrum. “We have three elements to our program for training. We do endurance, we do strength and we do speed. We did an endurance workout on Monday, we did a strength workout on Tuesday and with the race on Wednesday, they had their speed workout.”

The Bear Lake girls, who had seven of the top eight runners, narrowly missed a perfect score and finished first with 17 points.

Gilbert led the way with a time of 21:50, followed by teammates Faith Moerdyk (second, 22:42), McKaya Groenwald (third, 22:55), Kelly Babcock (fifth, 23:23), Alycia Peterson (sixth, 23:35), Meredith Hengy (seventh, 24:35) and Alyson Fink (eighth, 24:40).

The Bear Lake boys also finished comfortably in first with a score of 22 and placed six in the top 10.

Girven crossed the finish line first in 18:28, followed by Shane Peterson (third, 19:27), Jordan Anderson (fourth, 19:38), Jared Bair (sixth, 19:57), John Schoedel (eighth, 20:19) and Cole Verrett (20:20).

Both the boys and girls were missing one of their top runners, but it didn’t have an impact on the jamboree as the Lakers competed for the first time since the Pete Moss Invitational at Benzie Central on Aug. 25.

“It was a good opportunity for them to get another race under their belt,” Shrum said. “It’s a pretty cool course with a lot of twists and turns, a lot of ups and downs, so it’s not an incredibly fast course, as evidenced by the times.”

     
   

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