McGivney's Ross Bushur heads a pack of runners. (Photo by Dan Brannan)

ALHAMBRA – Edwardsville's boys won the large-school championships at Tuesday's Madison County Cross-Country Championship, hosted by Highland, in Alhambra.

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The Tiger boys won the title by finishing 2-3-4-5-8 in the individual standings and scoring 22 points; Triad took second with 72 points, followed by Granite City (92), the host Bulldogs (109), Collinsville (112) and Alton (125); the Tiger girls went 2-3-7-10-12 for 34 points to win their crown, followed by Triad (41), Highland (61), Alton (123) Collinsville (132) and Granite City (142).

McGivney Catholic won the boys small-school crown with a 1-3-5-8-12 finish for 29 points, ahead of Civic Memorial (35), Roxana (78) and East Alton-Wood River (80); Marquette Catholic and Madison did not have enough runners for a team score, but competed as individuals. The girls small-school championship went to CM with 26 points, ahead of Roxana's 31; Marquette and and McGivney did not field teams on the day.

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Edwardsville head boys cross country coach George Patrylak said he would have liked to have kept out some of the top runners in his lineup but they knew Triad and Highland would be tough to beat. He wanted to keep the Tigers’ county meet wins in tact so he decided to run his varsity unit. He said he thought his boys did well.

“We had four runners under 16 minutes,” Patrylak said. “The course Monday was a lot tougher than Peoria and it was tough to step it up after such a strong race at Peoria on Saturday, but the boys stepped it up and turned in a very impressive boys effort overall in the Madison County Meet.”

Edwardsville's boys scoring runners were Roland Prenzler (second in 15:48.96), Jack Pifer (third in 15:56.42), Franky Romano (fourth in 15:56.61), Max Hartmann (fifth in 16:18.06) and Holden Potter (eighth in 16:40.55). Granite City's Andrew O'Keefe won the individual championship in 15:40.09, while Alton's Cassius Havis and Kelvin Cummings finished 6-7 in 16:21.62 and 16:36.01 respectively; Collinsville's Benny Hernandez (ninth in 16:49.61) and Triad's Ben Walter (10th in 16:58.44) rounded out the top 10 on the day.

McGivney's Ross Bushur finished second in 16:20.48 to lead the Griffins, with Tyler Guthrie (fourth in 17:28.23), Zach Brasel (sixth in 17:54.08), Diego Pacheco (ninth in 18:40.97) and Eiljah Burns (13th in 19:00.92) rounding out McGivney's scorers on the day. Madison's Javon Watkins won the individual title in 15:57.39, with the Eagles' Cohl Callies (third in 17:11.11), CM's Parker Borth (fifth in 17:35.97), CM's Mark Eldridge (seventh in 18:12.72), Roxana's Jarett Warmack (eighth in 18:13.52) and CM's Colton Hyman (10th in 18:44.57) rounding out the top 10. Chase Wallendorff (12th in 18:58.33) was EAWR's top runner of the day and Seth Cox (27th in 22:55.96) led Marquette.

Brent Feeney also contributed to this story.

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