Tuesday, Sept. 28, the EJSHS cross country teams traveled to Lyons High School to compete in their invitational, hosted on the campus of LHS.

Summer had held on for one more day, making it a warm day to run. Regardless, it proved to be a great day to run. We had strong times, had some strong performances, and several runners came home as medalists, including Byron Johnson, bringing home a medal that has eluded EHS for almost 20 years.

The 7th grade runners started the meet, running a 1 mile race. This was their final 1-mile race, as next week’s races will be 2-mile races. Reese Grothusen ran 8:27 and medaled 7th in the girls race, with Tegan George finishing 35th in the boys race, time of 8:15 and Anthony Jundt running a 9:53 to finish 39th.

In the 8th grade boys’ 2-mile race, Grayson Stone medaled 5th out of 30 runners with a 13:25 and Mikhail Meier ran a 19:13 to finish 29th.

In the 8th grade girls’ race, Addison Thomas ran her second fastest time of the season of 15:46 to earn a 7th place medal, and Kate Rathbun was 8 seconds off her personal best time with a run of 20:59 to place 12th.

The high school girls’ 5K was next on the schedule, with medals going to the top 15. Madison Newell was the first Bearcat across the line with a time of 25:00. Madi had been in the 5-10th place mark most of the race, and had separated herself from 8th place over the last half of her race to bring home a 7th place medal.

Noah Goss finished with a time of 27:33, and fought her way back into the medals with her 13th place finish.

Senior Kirsten Meier finished her last career race at Lyons with a time of 29:27, finishing 20th place.

On the boys’ side, Ellsworth had strong performances from the guys, but we only had four varsity runners, and weren’t able to run a full team at Lyons.

Byron Johnson dominated the boys’ race, taking first place overall with a time of 19:10. Byron ran with kids from Sterling and Little River for the first 80-100 meters of the race, but pulled into the lead position, stretching his lead to 10-12 seconds over second place, a lead he maintained until the finish.

To put into perspective how difficult it is to win this race, this was the first varsity gold medal that an individual EHS runner has brought home from the Lyons meet since 2003 when Brendan Ptacek and Patty Leal each did it in their races.

Trenton Holmes finished one place out of the medals in 16th, with a time of 21:42, his second best time on the season.

Three places back in 19th was the 3rd EHS runner to cross the line, Jacob Togersen, with a time of 21:50, missing his PR time by only 15 seconds.

Aidan Johnson finished in 28th with a time of 24:59, not far off his personal best time set at the Southeast of Saline race last week.

This week the ‘Cats race Tuesday at their home meet and the junior high wraps up its season Thursday with a league run at Minneapolis.