Sage Is The Rage; Bombers Show Improvement

Ballard Scores 136 Team Points

September 29, 2023

The men's cross country team competed in the Leon Fox Invitational and finished 5th with 136 team points. Winterset won the meet finishing with 23 team points.

Bradley Sage led the Bombers finishing 8th overall. Sage finished with a time of 17:24.00. Max Davidson finished 18:13.00 and placed 18th overall. Jameson Witt finished 20th.

The Bombers are back in action on Thursday - October 5 when they compete in the Fort Dodge Meet. The junior varsity and varsity will race and the action starts at 4:30 PM.

Comments From Head Coach Scott Barth:

"Bradley Sage continued to shine for us placing 8th with a time of 17:24. As a senior he has really stepped up his game and is a great role model for our other guys about what hardwork and dedication can do. Max Davidson is working his way back to health and finished with a solid 18:13 to place 18th. Jameson Witt ran a season best time of 18:21 in placing 20th. Braden Kubichek and Isaac Swisher closed out our scoring with places or 41st and 50th in career PR's of 19:28 and 19:50. Alex Weeks and Jude Jones closed out our varsity with 56th and 67th placings in times of 20:24 and 21:40. We ran a pretty young line up racing 3 freshmen and a sophomore in the line-up. It is giving our younger guys some good experience heading forward. Kolbe Odden and Seth Hilleman both had solid races in JV with career PR's of 21:20 and 21:59 respectively. Our group of freshmen have some really good potential for growth over the course of the next few meets and heading into next week. 5 out of our current top 10 are freshmen. That's a promising sign for our program. We were missing a key runner for us tonight as Graden Hermann works his way back from injury. Like Annika, I think he is on the mend and will join us in our next meet at Ft Dodge. Having him in the line up is a key. Inserting him would have most likely shaved 30 points off of our score, which is a big deal.

Now we will take the next week to prepare for the end of the season. We really have shown growth in the past 10 days and I think our trajectory is good heading forward.

We are running a lot of young runners in key positions and they are learning the sport and becoming more comfortable in their roles on the teams. We had 18 athletes set season and/or career PR's last night. I think that is promising for a strong end of the season."

LEON FOX INVITATIONAL MEN'S TEAM SCORES

1. Winterset, 23

2. ADM, 41

3. Des Moines Christian, 116

4. Bondurant-Farrar, 135

5. Ballard, 136

6. Roland-Story, 191

7. Greene County, 198

8. Perry, 206

9. Boone, 224

10. Des Moines North, 237

11. Saydel, 309