EDWARDSVILLE – Edwardsville's boys cross-country team had a successful day on their own Edwardsville Invitational meet Saturday morning at SIU-Edwardsville's Mud Mountain cross-country course.
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The Tiger boys finished 2-3-4-7-16 to come out winners on the day with 32 points, with Waterloo taking second (110), CBC third (136), Trenton Wesclin fourth (149) and Jacksonville fifth (178); McGivney Catholic, led by Ross Bushur's fifth-place finish in 16:56.63, took sixth as a team with 202 points, while CM was 12th (302 points), Alton 14th (305 points), Roxana 16th (352 points) and MEL 19th (567 points). Jersey had four runners compete as individuals on the day.
“We definitely saw a lot of positives today on both sides,” said Tiger coach George Patrylak. “Likewise, there's also a lot of things we need to tighten up and work on; it's been a week and a half since we've been here last with the Tiger Fall Classic and it was a warm morning, but we had several PRs and I know the boys and the girls were able to defend their home course; overall, it was a pretty successful day.
“We take a lot of pride in doing well on this course; it's one of the tougher courses in the state, so we always want to make sure we're doing a good job representing Edwardsville when we're here.”
The Tiger boys saw good performances from Roland Prenzler (second in 16:26.05), Max Hartmann (third in 16:52.56) and Franky Romano (fourth in 16:56.29 to help get the win; other scoring finishes came from Jack Pifer (eighth in 17:09.94) and Todd Baxter (17th in 17:51.53).
“The boys, we're still trying to solidify our top seven,” Patrylak said. “I think we saw a little bit of improvement in the races of several of our individuals; I know Roland was back to being our No. 1 – I know he wasn't last weekend in Peoria, he was sick earlier in the week and just had a little bit of an off-race, but I know he ran solid. I would have liked to see Roland make a little harder of a move with about a half-mile or a mile to go, but we're learning.
“Franky, Jack and those guys had pretty solid races; Max is continuing ot run well for us and last year, he was our No. 5, so Max has steadily improved – we need to make sure the rest of the guys keep improving with him. Todd Baxter stepped up today – he stepped up to be our fifth scorer and he did a pretty solid job today.”
Other top area runners on the day included Alton's Cassius Havis, who finished sixth in 17:08.20, Madison's Javon Watkins (who was a standout in the former MEL-Madison co-op program) taking seventh in 17:09.38, McGivney's Tyler Guthrie finishing 14th in 17:49.69, CM's Cohl Callies finishing 25th in 18:06.29, Roxana's Cree Stumpf taking 42nd in 18:50.29, Jersey's Asher Stidd finishing 45th in 18:54.68 and MEL's Josh Jacobsen finishing 110th in 20:56.90.
