PEORIA - Father McGivney is known for having a strong group of boys and girls distance runners, but another emerged this past week at the Peoria Heights Patriot Invitational.
The Peoria meet saw 14 complete JV boys teams/136 runners; 34 varsity boys (284 runners) who competed on the legendary Detweiller Park.
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The future looks bright for the Griffins as the junior varsity team placed fourth. Eli Germann led the JV boys with a 20th place time of 18:35 for three miles and Andrew Leonelli was 26th with a time of 18:56 and Eric Rybak was 289th with a time of 19:02. Nolan Schmieder was 50th with a time of 19:45 and Harrison Siegel was 59th with a clocking of 20 minutes. Caleb Payne came in at 20:05 and Gabe Thiems in a time of 20:57. The JV performance was magnificent, Head McGivney Cross Country Coach Jim Helton said.
Germann, Leonelli, and the JV boys are Byron, Carlson, Petri & Kalb Male Athletes of the Month for Father McGivney.
The varsity boys were again outstanding and raced to ninth overall, and were led once again by Connor Schmidt. He has become the Griffins most consistent racer over the fall, once again under 17:00, with a 16:53 (44th), two seconds from a personal best, Coach Helton said.
Senior Levi Huber set a personal best of 17:00 (55th), with Liam Boeving 77th, Liam Schmidt 86th, and Aidan Schmidt 89th. The boys 1-5 split (41 seconds) was good, Coach Helton said. Jackson Ehrman raced to a Detweiller best of 20:18.
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