The Batesville Middle School Cross Country team had a great night participating in the Waldron Invitational. We were one of 11 schools competing for both varsity and JV championships. The girls stepped to the line first. Seventh grader Ava Wade led the team with a first-place finish in a time of 11:54. Jayla Bedel was next across the stripe in 3rd place, Elia Wade in 6th, Hilary Ziegler in 7th, Maycee Holtkamp in 8th, Caitlin Raver in 9th, and Nya Moon in 11th place. The girls’ team score was 25 points to Indian Creek’s 57 and Greensburg’s 82 points.
The boys varsity team was led by eighth grader Levi Essick who crossed the finish line in 12:00 minutes to secure a 10th-place finish. Following Essick was Cael Luhman in 23rd place, Hank Bohman in 26th, Abe Trossman in 27th, Wyatt Essick in 28th, and Ryan Benz in 32nd. Overall, the boys had a 4th place finish with 106 points, just getting edged out of 3rd by a narrow margin of 2 points by Hauser who had 104 points on the night.
The JV runners also did not disappoint and brought home many top 10 ribbons and both boys’ and girl’s teams won the team competitions. The girls managed to sweep the podium by finishing 1-10 in the following order: JV Champion Audrey Dieckmann, Aubrey Weberding, Kenzi Lacey, Addison Mills, Bailey Feldmann, Bhuvi Ranka, Alyssa Cummings, Annabel Eckstein, Brielle Maple, and Caroline Wiedman. Earning ribbons in the boys JV race were JV Champion Jasper Johnson, Sam Patterson in 2nd, Coleman West in 6th, Luke Raver in 8th, and Tripp Hertel in 9th.
(Information provided by Batesville Middle School Cross Country)