Carbondale, IL — Carterville High School kicked off their cross country season at the Carbondale HS Cross Country Invite on Saturday, Sept. 7. The girls team placed 2nd overall behind the State ranked Anna-Jonesboro squad. Carterville had their top 5 girls across the finish line before the 22nd runner could finish. Molly Robertson won the meet overall finishing the 3.05 mile course in a quick 18:55. The next closest competitor was almost a minute behind her. The other 4 Carterville runners in scoring positions were: Lyla Seaman - 8th, Laney Sambursky - 14th, Dani Williamson - 20th, and Marcela Wood - 21st. Veteran runners Lillian Carsrud, Liesel Balmforth and Leina Jaimet finished 6th - 8th for the squad respectively. This race allowed unlimited runners so all girls competed in the same race and Carterville represented the biggest squad with 16 girls. Landry Crain, Isabella Dion, Aubrey Baldi, Kylie Davey, and Zi Zhang all ran their first ever HS meet and set PR’s for themselves. Veteran runners Ava Szczeblewski, Connie Xiao, and Aubrey Bahr also competed. On the boys side, Carterville HS finished 3rd overall, with Herrin taking 1st and Farmington MO finishing just 6 points ahead of Carterville for 2nd. Carterville was paced by August Anderson with a finish time of 17:38 which was good for 11th place. He was followed by Reece Scott just 5 seconds later for 12th place. James Samples was only a second off Reece and finished 13th. Mason Webb and Rowan Beyke rounded out the top 5 for Carterville with a 15th and 23rd place finish respectively. Freshman Jack Robertson finished 6th for the team and Nick Korte was 7th. With unlimited runners at the race, Carterville also had several Freshmen running their first HS meet and all ran strong races. Those runners are Nick Wilhelm, Jake Wilhelm, Braeden Erwin, and Ivan Stojanovski. Veteran runners Liam Sylwester, Vincent Lin and Mitchell Carsrud also competed at the race. Carterville will be in action next on Thursday, Sept 12th at the Redbird Invite in West Frankfort.