The Southeast Valley cross country teams capped homecoming week with a morning meet at Pocahontas on Saturday, October 10th. The Jaguar girls were first to compete in the meet and finished 9th place overall in the team standings. Pocahontas Area was the meet champion with 71 points, Alta Aurelia was second with 77 and Manson NW was third with 81 points.

   Hailey Rees continues to lead the girls running the 5k course in a time of 26:00 to finish 38th overall. Katie Field was the next Jaguars to finish running a 29:29 to finish 64th. Running a season best of 30:12, Alexis Peterson edged teammate Emma Gernhart to earn 65th while Emma’s 30:13 was 66th. Abbi Tucker was the fifth Jaguar to cross the finish line in 30:49 and 68th place.  

   In the final race of the morning, Oscar Hanson was the top Jaguar to finish shaving a second off his season best to claim the bronze medal in 17:52. Cooper Nuss was six seconds behind Oscar to take 5th place running 17:58. Freshmen Lincoln Akins and Ethan Tucker were the next two Jaguars, both improving their season best times by 30 seconds, running 20:29 and 20:49 respectively to claim 31st and 35th place. Kyle Johnson took 38th place running a 21:13.  

   Those five runners combined for the teams best finish this year taking 4th place overall in the teams standings with 105 points. Sioux Central won the meet with 44 points, followed by East Sac County with 44 and Manson NW with 96.

   Sophomore Dreyvon Steadman keeps moving up on the team to be the sixth runner finishing in 22:11 (52nd). Freshmen Drew Dorsey (53rd, 22:18) edged junior Spencer Suchan (54th, 22:21) for the 7th scoring spot on Saturday.

   Also season best times on Saturday were Cole Lundgren 23:19 (59th) and Jacob Snyder 24:37 (70th). Caden Kaltschnee (75th, 25:07), Caelan Oakes-Sudhish (76th, 25:16), Jameric Dalley (85th, 26:53), Elias Field (87th, 27:00) and Ryan Stewart (93rd, 30:21) also competed for Southeast Valley on Saturday.

   The Jaguars will next compete on Tuesday, October 4th at Lake City before heading to Ida Grove on Monday, October 10th for their regular season meet. Southeast Valley will start off their championship part of the season by hosting the Twin Lakes Conference meet on Saturday October 15th in Gowrie.