BELLEVILLE - The Edwardsville High girls cross country team bounced back very nicely from last week's Granite City Invitational to place four runners in the top ten, and six in the top 12, to win the Belleville West Invitational Saturday morning at Belleville West High School. The Tigers return to action in a meet scheduled for 3 p.m. on Friday. The Tigers resume action at Swansea Clinton Hills Conservation Park against all the teams in the Southwestern Conference except East St. Louis in a newly announced meet.
The Tigers had 31 points to win the meet, with O'Fallon coming in second with 39 points. Granite City was third with 107 points, Mascoutah came in fourth with 112, Belleville West was fifth with 142, followed by Belleville Althoff Catholic placing sixth at 156, Columbia seventh at 186, Belleville East eighth with 195, and East St. Louis ninth with 247 points.
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Edwardsville head coach George Patrylak was very pleased with how the girls' team bounced back from last week's race at Granite, and how they took the coaches' advice into the race at West.
"The girls bounced back really well from last week at Granite City," Patrylak said. "I was very pleased with the way they ran at Granite City, and they took the advice we talked about during the week, and did a great job in implementing it in today's race. We were able to win the team title by eight points over O'Fallon, and we put six runners into the top 12, including three in the top five."
Those top five runners were Riley Knoyle, who was third at 17:57.65, Makenna Lueking at 19:22.85, and her sister Maya, who had a time of 19:26.69. In addition, Dylan Peel was eighth with a time of 19:49.95, while Kaitlyn Loyet was 11th a 19:56.63 and Whitney Dyckman was 12th at 19:57.82.
"Riley had a strong race, came in third, and was our first finisher," Patrylak said.
"Makenna Lueking had a nice bounce back, and finished ahead of her sister, and we had four freshmen running, and all four did a nice job."
Loyet's time under 20 minutes was a personal milestone for her and a very solid reward for persevering under very difficult conditions.
"Kaitlyn Loyet being under 20 for the first time ever," Patrylak said, "and it was exciting to see her break 20, with all she's had to battle through the past two years."
O'Fallon's Peyton Schieppe was the individual champion, coming in at 17:44.00, with the Maroons' Alyssa Elliott second at 17:49.24. After the Edwardsville trio of Knoyle and the Lueking sisters, the Panthers' Julia Monson was sixth with a time of 19:35.32, with her teammate Ella Peterson seventh at 19:38.66. Peel was eighth, with Granite City's Lacey Kunz ninth at 19:53.99, and O'Fallon's Hannah Zura 10th at 19:54.49.
The other Tiger runner in the field was Olivia Coll, who came in at 21:14.30. Besides Kunz, the Warriors had Claire Sykes come in at 19:59.70, Lauryn Fenoglio was timed in 20:53.84, Shannon Roustio came in at 22:07.12, Lillian Harris was at 22:26.00, Emilee Franklin was timed at 22:40.11, and Rowan Wallace came in at 28:23.94.
The top runner for East Side was DiNajia Griggs at 22:19.90, followed by Lenikei Burns, who's time was 24:16.05, Markia Lampley at 28:42.60, Sasia King at 30:15.16, and Ambrasha Lampley, who had a time of 34:27.79.
Alton, Valmeyer and Collinsville also had runners in the race, but did not record team scores. The Redbirds were led by Sophia Paschal, with a time of 21:11.24, with Maggie Ni coming in at 31:57.01. Katie Morwick led the Pirates with a time of 26:27.11, while Peyton Vest had a time of 26:31.13, Megan Morwick came in at 29:22.29, and Lily Turner was in at 31:12.26. The Kahoks' top runner was Maggie Fitzgerald, who had a time of 22:26.89, while Hannah Pettit came in at 23:48.22, and Kassidy Rea was at 25:26.06.
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