Clearwater, KS — ClearWater, KS - 9/6/24 It was a warm, but beautiful afternoon as we participated in our first meet of the season in ClearWater, Kansas! Yesterday we had 5 runners medal with our 5k boys team winning the meet and placing 4 boys in the top 15! On the girls side Olivia Brownell came away with a 14th place finish and a medal! The boys were paced by Luke Griffith who took 1st place in the 5k with an impressive 17:05 finish just 5 seconds off his PR. Link to Race Times https://ks.milesplit.com/meets/626634-2024-clearwater-hsms-invitational-2024/results/1067576/formatted/ There were a lot of positives for us to take away from this first meet. For some of our runners this was their first race they had ran for the Goddard High School Cross Country team! There were definitely a lot of nerves for our newcomers, but they all got out there and ran a great race! For our returners yesterday provided a starting point for our season as they work closer towards beating their PR and improving! Thank you everyone who came out and supported! Yesterday was a ton of fun with the music playing at the start line and everyone enjoying the festivities at team camp. Highlights from Clearwater: 1. Our Boys team took 1st place overall! 1. Goddard (20) 2. Halstead (50) 3. Mulvane (55) 2. We had 5 runners medal by placing in the Top 15 in the 5k 3. 4 of our Boys placed in the Top 15 and medaled (Luke Griffith 1st, Nathan Lewis 7th, Ayden Smith 10th, and Levi Brownell 13th) 4. 1 Girl placed in the Top 15 and medaled (Olivia Brownell) 5. Rachel Povall ran a new personal record in the 2 mile! She went from a 23:50 to a 21:20! 6. For 8 of our runners this was their first race running for Goddard High School! Gavin Weaver, Cooper Stelling, Aiden Nance, Zach Montgomery, Efren Bravo Bautista, Brooklyn Jones, Giselle Avitia, and Korrtney Koirth. After a hard first couple of weeks of practice navigating the hot weather with early morning practices it was encouraging to see the times we were able to put up yesterday. We have not had as much time to run out in the heat due to extreme temperatures and that definitely had an affect on us yesterday. Clearwater has always been such a great 1st race for our team as it is a flatter course and gets us back into racing! The Lions will want to run their best race times at the end of the season when it counts! Looking at our first race in ClearWater we are extremely pleased at where we are as a team. We believe we are much farther along this season than in previous years largely attributed to summer conditioning. Our next race will be next week on Saturday 9/14 in Wellington, Kansas. Once I get race information I will be sending out our next race itinerary. Next week we will be on our normal practice schedule from 3:15pm - 4:45pm. On Wednesday we will be going out to Lake Afton for a long run! Practice Wednesday we will take vans and practice will run from 3:15 to roughly 5:15 - 5:30. GO LIONS! Blake Andrews/Coach Heim