The Ballard men's cross country team finished third at the Perry Invitational on Thursday night.  The Bombers would score 79 team points and would only trail the champions, Winterset (30 points) and Des Moines Christian (30 points).  Seth Pencook finished 11th overall for the Bombers and Austin Shoen finished closely behind with a 13th place finish.

Comments From Head Coach Scott Barth:

"The boys competed very well today and took a step forward and hopefully gave us some more added confidence. Seth Pencook took over the top spot for our pack of varsity runners placing 11th. Austin Shoen, coming back illness, finished a solid 13th, Trent Payne finished in 16th, Bradley Sage and Jayden Leland teamed up to finish ini 19th and 20th to round out our scoring. Peyton Johnson stepped into the varsity position placing a great 28th and Logan Huntrods finished out varsity with a 34th place finish out of 145 runners competing. We were without Max Davidson, who has been running in the top 5 for us, as he started the race with a slight injury and we had his step off when it appeared he was struggling a bit. We feel he just needs a bit more rest and should be back in the line-up by the next meet in Fort Dodge. Again, we still haven't put together a full team yet. We are usually missing at least 1 varsity runner but still manage to compete well. That is encouraging moving forward if we can get all of the runners healthy and working together. We are currently what I would call a bubble team for a state meet appearance but we are in the conversation. We will work hard to make a run."

The Bombers are back in action on Thursday - October 6 when they compete in the Fort Dodge Invitational.  The meet will feature the junior varsity and varsity and start at 4:30 PM.

PERRY INVITATIONAL MEN'S TEAM SCORES

1. Winterset, 30

2. Des Moines Christian, 30

3. Ballard, 79

4. Bondurant-Farrar, 126

5. Greene County, 159

6. Boone, 176

7. Perry, 206

8. Des Moines North, 220

9. Roland-Story, 236

10. Saydel, 246

PERRY INVITATIONAL MEN'S INDIVIDUAL TIMES

11 Seth Pencook, 17:35

13 Austin Shoen, 17:45

16 Trent Payne, 18:14

19 Bradley Sage, 18:36

20 Jayden Leland, 18:39

28 Peyton Johnson, 19:15

34 Logan Huntrods, 19:21