New Richmond girls take sixth at Eau Claire North cross country invite

• Anne Frank

New Richmond junior Anne Frank leads a pack of Tigers through one of the six water crossings in the River Falls Extreme Meet last Thursday.
• Kaylin Peterson

Somerset's Kaylin Peterson splashes her way through the river during the River Falls Extreme Meet last week.
• Sarah Brown, Grace Becher

Somerset's Sarah Brown makes a big splash in the water as teammate Grace Becher prepares to dive in during the River Falls Extreme Meet.

Talk about it

The New Richmond cross country teams got a good look at most of the top Division 1 teams in western Wisconsin on Saturday when they ran in the Husky Invitational hosted by Eau Claire North.

The Tiger girls placed sixth among 15 teams in the meet while the Tiger boys ranked 11th in their half of the race.

The results of the girls race were a bit skewed. Hudson standout Katie Wetzstein and the bike guiding the lead runners moved so far ahead of everyone that the next group of runners lost sight of her. That caused that group of about a dozen runners to take a wrong turn, adding at least 500 yards to their race. New Richmond’s three top runners, Morgan Kelly, Maddie Kelly and Kat Keller were in that group. That dropped back each about 40 places in the results, adding more than 90 seconds to their times. That extra mileage quite possibly bumped the Tigers back a spot or two in the team standings.

With those runners taking a wrong turn, Wetzstein won by more than a minute over second place Meg Van de Loo of Eau Claire Memorial.

Bailey Matthys, Emily Bischof and Ellen Meisner still gave the Tigers a strong top three in the race. Matthys finished 13th, Bischof 14th and Meisner 20th, all of them finishing in under 17 minutes. Anne Frank placed 46th and Ari Ziemer placed 54th in her first cross country race.

Junior Alex Charbonneau was the leader for the Tiger boys, ranking 29th with a time of 18:14. Freshman Jack Utzman, who ranked fifth in his grade level, was the second Tiger, placing 63rd. Alec Knox, Zach Schoepke and Luke Miller ran together for much of the race, with Knox ending 71st, Schoepke 74th and Miller 77th.

With the two meets in three days, plus the Spooner camping trip at the start of the week, last week was a bit disjointed in terms of training for the Tigers. Tiger coach Beth Kelly said that’s why she built in a long stretch before the team competes again. They won’t run in a meet until they host the New Richmond Invitational on Thursday, Sept. 8. This stretch of nearly two weeks will give the team time to concentrate on their training without having to break up the regimen with any meets.

Extreme meet

New Richmond and Somerset ran in the annual River Falls Extreme Meet last Thursday on the UW-River Falls campus.

The meet is viewed as more of a fun run by most of the coaches in the meet. Runners cross the Kinnickinnic River six times during the race, so their times don’t necessarily translate well to other races.

“It breaks up the monotony of doing the same thing all the time,” said Somerset coach Diane Belter. “It puts a fun element in it.”

While New Richmond is taking an extended break from races, Somerset is diving right back into its schedule. The Spartans will run this Thursday in the St. Croix Central Invitational.

Tags: cross country, sports, tigers, spartans, prep