On Wednesday, Oct. 1, the Wildcats cross country team competed at a home meet at Natural Bridge State Park. The boys team placed first out of five teams, while the girls team placed third out of five.

It was senior night for the ‘Cats, and there were six seniors racing for the ‘Cats at this meet. These seniors included Trenten Cash, Ethan Erkskine, Kate Holston, Dorothy Lewis, Evelyn McClung, and Gemma Batis. 

Leading the boys was senior Trenten Cash with a 3rd place finish with a time of 18:02.40. 

“The Natural Bridge State Park race was easy for me. Because of the difficulty of the course, we know that there is very little chance of breaking your personal record, so typically we take it more as a workout than an all out race in order to conserve our energy for later races,” Cash said. “Running fairly easy and still finishing with a pretty good time on senior night was great. It was nice to see the cumulation of all my years of work finally peak.” 

 Second on the team was junior Tyler Ludtke with a 4th place finish with a time of 18:02.40. 

“It was really hard and hilly. I went out super easy the whole time and then kicked it in at the end for 3rd,” Ludtke said. 

For the girls, freshman Reagan led the girls team with a 5th overall finish with a time of 23:16.40. Senior Dorothy Lewis finished 2nd on the team and 10th overall with a time of 24:16.70. 

“The course was super difficult; there were lots of hills. It was still a great race though! Definitely not a PR, but our team did well and we had so much fun,” Lewis said.

The ‘Cats raced on Saturday October 4th at the State Preview meet and placed 2nd. The next race will be on Wednesday October 8th at Buffalo Gap.