Comet girls, boys take 1st and 2nd at Wolverine XC Invite

By John Burbridge sports@charlescitypress.com

DIKE — On Tuesday while competing at the Wolverine Cross Country Invitational, the Charles City Comets were faster than lightning.

Or at least they were able to get their varsity races in before the bolts flashed.

Anticipating stormy weather in the late afternoon, meet organizers moved the varsity races ahead of the junior varsity races. That may have thrown the Comets off-schedule as their timing was a little quicker than usual.

Charles City girls, who have recently moved up to No. 5 in Class 3A in the latest Iowa Association of Track Coaches poll, won the 18-team meet while edging runner-up Grinnell by 2 points (73-75).

Freshman Kiki Connell recorded a personal-best 5K time of 19 minutes, 25 seconds which was good enough for third place overall while pacing the Comets.

Junior Whitney Martin placed sixth (19:56), sophomore Mackenzy Bilharz took 17th (20:51), followed by Gillian King (20:54), Adison Olson (21:39), Selah Opp (21:54) and Ingrid Hernandez (22:00).

“Ingrid, Adison and Selah all had PRs,” Charles City girls head coach Amanda Rahmiller said, “and so did senior Gillian King.

“Last meet Gillian got into the 21s for the first time in her career, and now she’s below 21. She’s really ending her senior season with a bang.”

On the boys side, the Comets took second to Grinnell in the 20-team field with senior Gavin Connell and junior Mason Deeter both finishing under 17 minutes to pace Charles City.

Connell’s fourth-place time of 16:47 finally slayed a nagging long-time personal-best by 7 seconds.

“All seven of our varsity runners recorded PRs,” Comet boys head coach Ryan Rahmiller said of the group that also included Nick Litterer (17:14), Hayden Pleggenkuhle (17:51), Antwone Cooper (17:52), Zach Graeser (18:27) and Austin Connerley (18:31).

“This is a good, fast course to run,” Ryan Rahmiller said of the rather flat Fox Ridge Golf Course. “This is a good place to get some good times in before the conference meet next Tuesday [at Waukon].”

They were able to start the junior varsity girls race and had the junior varsity boys lining up for their race before lightning flashes during a steady rain immediately called things off.

“Our boys were ready to go, and I know Amanda’s girls were running well before they pulled them off the course,” Ryan Rahmiller said. “We’re hoping to find a meet sometime this week to enter in to give our junior varsity runners to chance to run once more before the season is over.”