It doesn’t matter the size or prestige — a meet win is a meet win.
On Monday, West Liberty’s boys’ cross-country team took advantage of a small seven-school meet at Little Bear Country Club and came out the victors.
Here, 55 runners participated and none were better than Comet freshman Carlos Meraz who took the win in 18:09.4. Additionally, sophomore Jonathan Juarez placed third with a time of 19:04.1.
These two were a big reason for how the Comets took first place in the team competition with 55 team points. They beat out squads from Easton Valley (71), North Cedar Stanwood (82), Calamus-Wheatland (90), Northeast Goose Lake (95) and Marquette Catholic Bellevue (98).
All five scoring Comets placed inside the top 25. They were junior Chris Gomez-Velasquez (20:52.6 — 14th), freshman Noah Garcia (21:15.5 — 19th) and freshman Damian Gonzalez (21:42.5 — 23rd).
Other Comet runners included sophomore Anwar Garcia (23:24.8 — 28th), junior Wesley Heath (23:57.0 — 31st), freshman Jessie Benitez (25:57.2 — 36th), Cameron Elizondo (26:01.6 — 38th), Isaac Aragon (26:20.9 — 39th), freshman Xiovanni Juarez (28:01.9 — 42nd), junior Ben Tharp (28:50.8 — 45th), sophomore Martin Estrada (29:26.5 — 46th) and sophomore Quinn Potts (32:44.0 — 53rd).
On the girls’ side of this event, just 15 participated in the high school varsity section.
Like the boys, Comet sophomores Madelyn Deahr and Addison Guerra took full advantage and placed second and third respectively with times of 24:12.7 and 24:15.0.
Sophomore Ximena Valenzuela clocked in eighth at 28:18.9 and junior Angelly Gonzalez placed 11th in 33:51.8.
Northeast Goose Lake was the only school to field five runners, so the Rebels won the meet by default.
While this Midland meet was miniscule, last Tuesday’s (Sept. 10) meet at Tipton City Park was one of the largest the Comets will run in all season.
Here, 85 boys and 70 girls ran in the varsity sections.
West Liberty placed seventh out of 10 eligible schools on the team leaderboard with 148 points.
Taking three of the top four individual spots, Anamosa won the meet with 38 team points. Tipton nearly held on, but its 43 points were not enough on this day.
Meraz was once again West Liberty’s top runner with an 18:35.6 effort. This means he dropped over 26 seconds from this Tipton meet to the Midland meet.
The other four scoring runners from West Liberty were Jonathan Juarez (19:37.7 — 24th), Noah Garcia (21:43.0 — 48th), Gonzalez (21:49.6 — 51st) and Gomez-Velasquez (21:56.5 — 53rd).
The Comet girls did not have enough runners to qualify for a team score. However, they still posted solid times.
Guerra took 30th in 24:20.2, Deahr placed 37th in 25:03.0 and freshman Aileen Aragon secured 47th in 25:50.9.
Tipton’s Noelle Steines was the only girl to go sub-20 minutes and won the race by nearly a full minute in 19:15.1.
On the boys’ side, the Anamosa tandem of Seth Countryman (17:46.7) and Nolan Weers (17:48.2) raced to a near photo finish.
West Liberty will get some time off to recuperate from a busy week. Both the boys’ and girls’ teams will race just twice more in September.
The Comets’ next meet is Monday, September 23 at the Solon XC Invitational. The teams will end the month in Lowden at the 3-30 Golf and Country Club for the Bill Bails Invitational on Monday, September 30.