The Southeast Valley cross country teams traveled to Panora on Thursday, September 15th to compete in the Panorama Cross Country Invite. After not competing for two weeks after the Greene County meet was canceled, 9 of the 18 Jaguars competing ran season best times on probably the hardest course of the season. Most others were just off their season best times.

   In the varsity boys’ race, Cooper Nuss and Oscar Hanson recorded 11th and 12th place finishes to take medal honors. Cooper ran a season best time of 18:22 while Oscar finished in a time of 18:34. Class 1A #2 ranked Ethan Loutzenheiser of Madrid won the meet in a time of 16:53.  

   Ethan Tucker (64th, 21:50), Lincoln Akins (68th, 22:11) and Kyle Johnson (72nd, 22:28) rounded out the scoring five for the Jaguars. Southeast Valley finished 8th in the team race with four ranked teams finishing ahead of them. Class 1A, #1 ranked ACGC won the meet with 46 points followed by #4 Ogden. Class 2A #2 Des Moines Chrisitan finished 5th overall without their top two runners who are currently ranked #1 and #5 in class 2A.  

   The Jaguar’s displacement runners were Spencer Suchan (79th) who ran a course PR of 23:03 and Drew Dorsey (80th) who cut almost a minute off his season best to run a 23:05.

   In the girls’ varsity race, the Jaguars had all five of their runners compete as a full team for the first time this season. Their team score of 303 was 12th in an equally challenging field. Class 2A, #5 ranked Van Meter won the title with 51 points, while #12 Clarinda was second and class 1A, #8 ranked Earlham was third.

Sophomore Hailey Rees led the Jaguars finishing 64th with a season best of 28:30. Katie Field cut over four minutes off her previous best time in 31:30 to finish 75th. Emma Gernhart completed her first race ever in 31:58 while Abbi Tucker dropped over 2 minutes off her previous best and Alexis Peterson’s 32:19 was also a season best and over a minute faster on this course then a year ago. They finished 76th, 77th and 78th respectively.

In the final race of the night, Southeast Valley had six boys competing in the JV race. Sophomore and first time harrier Dreyvon Steadman brought home a 16th place finish with a time of 22:26; almost a two minute PR. Jacob Snyder (62nd, 26:59) and Cole Lundgren (63rd, 27:05) ran course PRs while Jameric Dalley finished 71st (27:59). Also running their best times of the season were Elias Field (80th, 31:06) and Ryan Stewart (81st, 32:38)

The JV team placed 7th overall in the team race.

The Jaguars will compete again on Thursday, September 22nd at Roland Story before they compete on Saturday, October 1st at Pocahontas to end homecoming week.