The Southeast Valley cross country teams were welcomed to unseasonably warm temperatures for the Saturday morning Pocahontas cross country meet on September 30th. Usually a meet the athletes look forward to because of the flat course and cool temperatures, may have not gone quite as well as the Jaguars hoped. However, the Southeast Valley still had some strong performances on the day.

The high school girls had the first high school race of the morning. Sophomore Katie Field continues to improve and lead the Jaguars. She dropped almost another minute off of her career best time to run a 24:07 and finish the course in 25th place. Autumn Jones-Popp was the second Southeast Valley runner to cross the finish line, also improving her career best time in 25:39 to finish 39th. Hailey Rees nearly caught Autumn in the final mile of the race to take 41st in a season best of 25:49. Chole Parks (49th, 27:15) held off teammate Brooke Peterson (50th, 27:17) at the finish line to help the team to their 7th place finish with 167 points.

Emma Gernhart (55th) and Alexis Peterson (60th) both crossed the finish line with season best times of 28:15 and 29:54 respectively. Abbi Tucker (63rd) finished in 31:09. Sioux Central won the team title with 45 points followed by Ridgeview with 58 points and Pocahontas with 81 points.

Oscar Hanson continued to lower his time and be a meet medalist as he led the boys team with a 9th place finish and a season best of 17:47. Freshman Owen Nuss just missed out on medalist honors finishing 21st overall in a season best time of 19:15 which also puts him 4th overall for best freshmen time. Lincoln Akins was right behind Owen taking 23rd place running a career best of 19:21. Carter Ferry (31st) went 19:56 to be the 4th runner for the Jaguars while Grant Smith (41st) ran a 20:57 to set a career best time.

Those five boys combined for a team score of 120 points to finish 5th. East Sac County scored 31 points to win the title , while Sioux Central was 2nd with 71 points and Manson Northwest Webster was 3rd with 76 points.

Also running career PRs in the boys race for Southeast Valley were Caden Kaltschnee (63rd, 23:14) and Evan Kuhn (78th, 27:05). Cole Lundgren (48th, 21:27), Kyeo Augustine (49th, 21:27) and Ben Thompson (53rd, 21:48) finished the 5k race for the Jaguars just off of their season best. Freshman Kaleb Klein competed in his first race of the season finishing 84th in a time of 39:50.  

The Jaguars have their last regular season meet of the year at Lake City on Tuesday, October 3rd before heading to Alta on Thursday, October 12th for the Twin Lakes Conference meet.