EATON — Eaton hosted its 50th annual cross country invitational on Saturday, Sept. 14.
The Eagles boys team placed second, while the girls were fourth in the large school race.
“I was very pleased with the overall results for the Eaton Invitational. We knew the races were going to be very competitive with the top division on teams we had coming in to compete,” Eaton coach Randy McKinney said.
Eaton’s boys finished with 68 points. Lakota West won the race with 60 points.
Eaton’s girls scored 94 points to finish behind Talawanda (32), Fairmont (81) and Springboro (82).
Alex McCarty paced the way for Eaton’s boys with a second place finish in 16 minutes, 07.2 seconds. Jack Bortel was sixth in 16:58.9. They were followed by Todd Coates (12th, 17:13.2), Alex Newport (16th, 17:24.3), KeAnthony Bales (32nd, 18:01.7), Austin Kopf (36th, 18:08.3), Kolby Hamilton (37th, 18:11.4), Austin Pugh (56th, 18:49.6), Cole Hauser (74th, 19:19.60 and Logan Cottle (95th, 20:21.6).
“In the boys race, we had a great race with Lakota West, but they were able to put their third, fourth and fifth man in just behind our fourth man to beat us by eight points,” McKinney said. “It was not one of our best team races of the season, but a very solid team performance.”
For the girls, Cari Metz led the way with a 10th place finish in 20:33.2 and Lauren Guiley was 12th in 20:44.5. They were followed by Kiera Elliott (14th, 20:50.6), Kaili Hewitt (26th, 21:34.1), Rylie Haynes (32nd, 22:01.5), Stephanie Gibson (46th, 22:49.6), Alexis Owen (49th, 22:54.5), Briana Baker (51st, 23:11.6), Rachel Buckler (52nd, 23:20.0) and Allison Mowen (59th, 23:44.0.)
“In the girls race we finished behind three division one teams — Springboro, Talawanda and Kettering Fairmont. Springboro was ranked 14th last week in the state Division One poll, while Talawanda was ranked 10th and Kettering was ranked in the top 25 last week,” McKinney said. “The girls ran a solid race and easily outdistanced any of the other Division Two teams.”
McKinney said his team enjoys running on its home course, but feels the pressure to perform well in front of the home crowd.
“Our kids always feel the pressure to perform well individually and team wise at our invitational,” he said. “Our course is actually the toughest course we have competed on to this point in the season. The course was very dry and didn’t run very fast because the ground was so hard.”
Eaton was scheduled to host the county meet on Tuesday, Sept. 17.
