Bulldog Cross-Country competes well in Lebanon

by Head Coach Brian Goatley

On Saturday, Sept. 3, the El Dorado Springs cross-country team traveled to Lebanon to run in the Richard Clark SWCCCA cross country meet at Richardson Ranch. There were close to 700 athletes from Southwest Missouri schools participating in the meet between the High School boys and girls varsity and boys and girls JV races. All teams ran together, no matter the size of the school and then, for medals, were sorted out by class (1A, 2A, 3A and 4A) with 10 medals in each class.

On the boys side, ElDo entered six into the total field of 226 athletes.

Senior Tyler Goatley led the way for ElDo, finishing 9th overall and 1st in class 2A, with a time of 16:51.49. This was just 15 seconds off of his school record setting personal best time of 16:36, ran last year. Tyler has some really large lofty goals this year and this first race was a great step in the right direction.

Our other medalist on the boys side was Freshman Matthew Reddick. Matthew placed 4th in class 2A, 51st overall. As a freshman, this was Matthew’s first 5K race, since in Middle School, they didn’t race anything over 1.5 miles. So we were interested like every year to see how well our freshmen transition to the much longer distance. He ran well for his first race at the High School level. We are looking for great things out of Matthew.

On the girls side, El Dorado Springs also entered six into the field of 165 athletes. Junior Ashley Knoll led the way here, placing 24th overall and 1st in class 2A.

Ashley has entered this season with a little sharper focus. This year she doesn’t have Tessa Durnell to look up to for guidance. This year she has to start transitioning into more of a leadership roll. I think with that extra responsibility, her focus has become a bit sharper, looking forward to what this season has to offer her.

Our next four runners packed together during the first mile which led to pretty decent finishes for all four. Freshman Emily Sutton finished 3rd in class 2A, Senior Michaela Trotter finished 4th, Freshman Sarah King finished 5th and Junior Emily Ring finished 7th. By packing together, all four girls finished within 1 minute and 14 seconds of each other. This allows us to maybe begin thinking about the strength of our team. If we can tighten this pack a little to the finish and continue to move forward, our girls team looks to have some possibility at success moving into the rest of the season.

Overall, we were very pleased with how everyone ran. We have a lot of youth on the team, yet with the leadership we have, they didn’t seem to be overwhelmed and ran well for the first race of the year.

We next take our team to Nevada on Tuesday, Sept. 6. This will be the first race in which Middle School will participate. Races get started at 3:45 at Marmaduke Park.

Our 3rd race of the year will be the following Tuesday, Sept. 13, on the SBU campus in Bolivar.

If you get a chance to make it out to see us, we would love to have your support. We have a total of 12 High School athletes as well as 14 Middle School athletes to watch and cheer on.