It was an early morning for the Batesville High School Cross Country team as they headed to the west side of Indianapolis at 6:15 a.m. to compete in the Ben Davis Invitational. As the team arrived they experienced a quick little downpour leaving them with some wet clothes and a little muddy course. Thankfully, it was a short rain cell passing through and after about 15 minutes it was gone. The weather became very favorable for a nice 5K run as the temperature was in the low 60s and the humidity very minimal, something that the runners haven’t gotten to experience too much yet this season.
The Bulldogs took advantage of it and they finished with 15 season best performances and 7 career personal best performances. Batesville also had 3 athletes in the top 20 of their race, receiving awards from a very competitive field. In the boy’s race, there were 20 teams and 162 runners, and the girl’s race had 19 teams and 138 runners. This was the first big invitational of the season.
In the boy’s race, it was Jake Chapman leading the way for the Bulldogs, placing 18th overall and running a season’s best of 17:22. Also breaking 18 and finishing with a season’s best was Isaac Trossman in 43rd place at 17:56. Not too far behind Isaac was Cannon Clark also with a season’s best (18:09) and placing 52nd. He was followed closely by Deev Ranka, 61st (18;15) and season’s best, and Jaden Basler, 68th (18:21) and a career personal best. Finishing out the other Batesville runners in the varsity race was Ethan Rahschulte, also with a personal best (18:39), Cash Myers, season’s best (18:56), Paxton Harris, season’s best (19:03) and Benjamin Adams with a personal best (19:10). These times and places gave the Bulldogs an overall team place of 8th with 227 points. There were many 5A schools at this meet and the top 10 teams were:
Center Grove won with 79 points, just beating out Ben Davis with 84. Covington Catholic was 3rd with 102, Plainfield 4th-121, Mooresville 5th-178, Indy Crawfordsville 6th-180, Valparaiso 7th-190, Batesville 8th-227, North Central 9th-279 and Daville was 10th at 295 points.
The Varsity girls stepped up to the line next and placed 6 runners in the top 40 and 2 in the top 10! Leading the way for the Dogs were Lexiyne Harris in 8th with Kaylynn Bedel 2 seconds behind in 9th. Both running a season’s best at 20:05 and 20:07 respectively. Megan Allgeier crossed the finish line next for Batesville in 25th place with a season’s best of 21:15. Sam Adams and Kaylie Raver were closely behind Megan in 30th and 32nd place also with season’s best at 21:23 and 21:30. Bayleigh Demaree ran a personal best today at 22:09 and came in 36th place. Finishing out the varsity runners for the morning were Charlotte Trossman, Isabel Raab, and Ella Moster all running season’s bests (22:39, 22:42, and 24:00). All these performances set the girls up for a strong 2nd place finish behind a strong Valparaiso team who scored an amazing perfect score of 15 with there first 5 runners taking the first 5 places. The top ten teams for the day were: Valpo, 1st-15 points, Batesville, 2nd-94, Southport, 3rd-102, North Central, 4th-107, Plainfield, 5th-154, Heron, 6th-193, Ben Davis, 7th-207, Brebeuf, 8th-224, Park Tudor, 9th-243 and in 10th was Danville with 311 points.
They also had separate JV races today and Landon Raver, Brody Gibson, and Makenna Moore all with personal best performances, and Shanna Smith ran a season’s best.
Batesville will have another week to focus on practice and prepare for their biggest race so far, heading back up to the Indy area, for the Riverview Health Invitational in Carmel next Saturday morning.
“submitted by the school’s athletic department.”