Susan Harman

Your Prep Sports

IOWA CITY  – Pleasant Valley’s boys cross country team is ranked fourth, just four places ahead of City High, but on Thursday the Spartans made that seem like a world of difference.

Pleasant Valley captured the first six places at the Bud Williams Invitational at Iowa’s Ashton Cross Country Course, finished with a perfect score of 15 and had the Little Hawks shaking their heads.

“I don’t think we wanted to get perfect scored at our home meet,” City High senior Quenton Max said. “This is not going to make a very good story, is it?”

The Spartans were led by sixth-ranked Anthony Pena and 14th-ranked Konnor Sommer who finished 1-2 and 33 seconds ahead of teammate Gavin Smith, who was third. Max was City High’s top finisher in seventh, the first non-Spartan to cross the line.

“We wanted to watch Pena and Sommer because they’re ranked, but we should have watched the whole team; we had no answer,” Max said.

“We went out too hard. I don’t know what we were doing trying to go out with Pena. The top four of our guys were out too hard.”

Max was asked what he would do differently.

“I would slow down the first 800 for sure,” he said. “Our first mile was fine, but we slowed down so much over the second 800.”

Sophomore Caden Turnbough was eighth and junior Jonathan Brown ninth for the Little Hawks. Turnbough agreed that the early pace may have taken its toll.

“They went out pretty quick,” he said of the Spartans. “Our goals were to stick up with them. We were losing ground to them the first quarter to half mile, and that was stressful trying to make the ground back up.

“My pace for the first mile was too hot and I think Quenton too. Overall I just don’t think we performed the best we could today. I’m definitely going to learn from it, and I hope our team does too.”

City hadn’t run at Ashton since it’s new configuration but will get a second shot at it. City is the host school for the state-qualifying meet at this course next month.

Liberty placed sixth in the team standings and was led by 10th-place finisher Peter Woodward.

“I thought it was a really good race, really good competition out there,” Woodward said. “I ran the race I wanted to. I paced myself really well.”

Woodward, a sophomore who ran for West a year ago, was trying to work off the City High runners and infiltrated right behind the top three Little Hawk finishers.

Lightning coach Josh Hildebrand said his team has 20 runners midway through the season. He thinks Woodward has a real shot at qualifying for state.

“We started small and we built up,” Woodward said of Liberty’s inaugural cross country team. “Every day in practice our guys are improving. They’re getting more miles in every day. I think we’ve bonded together more.”

Bud Williams Invitational

Ashton Cross Country Course (UI)

Boys varsity team results: 1. Pleasant Valley 15, 2. City High 49, 3. C.R Jefferson 106, 4. Pekin 124, 5. Durant 151, 6. Iowa City Liberty 162, 7. Ottumwa 172, 8. Iowa Mennonite 217.

Individual leaders: 1. Anthony Pena (PV) 16:09.8, 2. Konnor Sommer (PV) 16:11.7, 3. Gavin Smith (PV) 16:44.6, 4. Parker Huhn (PV)16:51.4, 5. Ian Kaffengerger (PV) 17:02.6, 6. Andrew Witters (PV) 17:09.0, 7. Quenton Max (C) 17:12.5, 8. Caden Turnbough (C) 17:18.1, 9. Jonathan Brown (C) 17:27.0, 10. Peter Woodward (ICL) 17:28.1.

2. City High (49)– 7. Quenton Max 17:12.5, 8. Caden Turnbough 17:18.1, 9. Jonathan Brown 17:27.0, 12. James Momberg 17:32.5, Robbie Strang 17:35.7, 14. Eric Thomas 17:41.7, 15. Mitchell Wilkes 17:45.3.

6. Liberty (162)—10. Peter Woodward 17:28.1, 26. Jack Kinzer 18:39.3, 40. Spencer Knight 19:53.4, 41, Caleb Schillinger 19:55.0, 45. Henry Krain20:59.4, 47. Gavin Forbes 22:13.8, 48. Gavin Hayes 22: 13.8.