Warrenton junior Wyatt Claiborne led the Warriors with a top-20 finish at the Orchard Farm Invitational last week.
Warrenton cross country coach Jeremy Collins stressed the Warriors were training through the meet and had a hard workout Tuesday before the meet. Collins noted despite some of the runners feeling tired and having heavy legs, they still ran tough and had great effort.
“As you look at the schedule, you need to figure out what meets you want the kids to feel close to 100% and what meets you are going to train through,” Collins said. “With conference coming up, that is a meet I want them to to feel really good.”
The Warrenton boys cross country team placed ninth out of 15 teams. The girls team placed 10th out of 10 teams. Both teams were a few points from moving up a couple spots in the standings.
Wyatt Claiborne led the Warrior runners with a 16th place finish at the event. He ran the race in 17:53.
“Wyatt has medaled every race,” Collins said. “He is a very strong runner and very consistent. Wyatt is looking to earn first-team all-conference for the third year in a row.”
Coalton Hill and Zachariah Bristol both had top-50 finishes for Warrenton. Hill finished in 43rd place. Bristol placed 50th in the event. Collins said Hill has run a personal record each of the last three meets. Collins stressed Hill has run faster every meet than he did the previous meet.
“I don’t know if I have ever had a runner improve their time every single meet,” Collins said.
Sophomore Noah Cline narrowly missed a top-50 finish. Cline placed 52nd, finishing the race in 19:32.
“It’s been really fun watching these three as they continue to push themselves,” Collins said. “They have been motivated all season and now they have a little more motivation to keep their streak going.”
Madelyn Marschel led the Lady Warrior runners with a 23rd place finish. She finished the race in 22:43. Briana Grooms also registered a top-50 finish. She finished the race in 25:13. Collins specifically noted the performance of Abigail Palmer, who placed 80th in the event, fifth among all Lady Warrior runners. Palmer has improved her time by five minutes and ran a personal record of 31:15 in the race.
Collins noted there were both course and competition challenges at the Orchard Farm Invite. There were spots on the course where the runners had to run on concrete with spikes, which can interfere with the runner’s stride and rhythm. The boys runners competed against five of the top 16 runners in Class 4 and a top-five runner from Class 3. The girls runners competed against two top-25 runners from Class 3.
“They competed very well and I thought they really put in a great effort,” Collins said.
Warrenton is scheduled to compete at the Gateway Athletic Conference meet this Thursday at McNair Park in St. Charles. The Warriors will compete against all runners in the GAC, but the final times will be broken down into each division for all conference honors.
“I’m hoping they will feel fresh going into conference,” Collins said. “When you can earn all-conference, that is always something special…We are going to see some great runners and if we go into the meet with a positive attitude and run tough, I think we can have some pretty good times.”