"It was a great meet for us today at the state meet.  We ran well up and down the line-up which allowed us to get on the state championship podium for the 3rd straight season. 

Junior Paityn Noe dominated the field taking first places in a time of 18:12, which beat the #2 runner, Geneva Timmerman of ADM, by 54 seconds.  I cannot say enough about Paityn.  She is so steady for us and works very hard to put herself in the position to do so.  I am so happy that she got that state championship.  Sophomore Ava Vance continued to show improvement finishing a great 9th place in the team scoring and 11th overall.  Her time of 19:32 is her career personal record (PR) and a 27 second improvement over her last year's state meet race.  This earned Paityn and Ava all-state honors.  Freshman Annika Larson continued to surge at the end of the season placing 19th in the team scoring running her career PR of 20:08.  This was a 45 second improvement from her race on the same course 2.5 weeks ago.  Senior Kate Huisinga capped of her cross country career with a solid 32nd team placing in 20:34.  Freshman Ava Richardson, like Annika, also surged late in the season to give us a much needed boost.  Ava ran a 20:50 on the course tonight after running a 22:13 on the same course 2.5 weeks ago.  The amount of time she has cut is amazing and it came just at the right time.  Sisters Brooke Loewe and Raegan Loewe battled each other and finished out our varsity line-up placing 72nd and 73rd in the team scoring.  With this meet, Brooke closed out a stellar cross country career. She ran on four state qualifying teams.  Kate also closes out an awesome career being an integral part of the three most recent teams.  The teams they represented the last four years finished 4th, 1st, 1st and 2nd - that is quite a legacy!

The most impressive thing about our running tonight was how strong we were as we progressed through the race.  At the one mile mark we were in 4th place as a team with a score of 167.  At the two mile mark we had improved by 36 points and moved into 3rd place.  At the finish, we improved by another 28 spots which moved us into the runner-up position at the state meet. 

Annika on her own improved by 19 spots in the last 2.1 miles of the race, Kate improved by 35 spots and Ava Richardson by 24.  That was a key in our state runner-up finish.  It was impressive.  Our training worked well for us and I think we peaked at the right time again this season. I am proud of these girls.  So, all in all, it was a great day to be a Bomber."