Julie Calzonetti
Sugar Beet staff reporter
The men’s and women’s cross country teams continued their season at the 2018 Hays High-Victoria High invite in Hays, Kan. on Thursday, Sept. 13. The Buffs finished overall in second place as a team behind Dodge City. The top finishers for boys varsity were Ethan Fisher in second place and Angel Ayala in fourth place. For the junior varsity boys’ race the highest finishes were Nicholas Levya in sixth followed by Nathanial Hubbard in ninth. On the girls’ side, Taylor Savolt finished in third place with the next top being Destiny Avila in ninth in the varsity race. For girls, junior varsity, top runners in third place were Jacqueline Gonzalez and Nayely Salazar in eighth. The girls’ team gathered a total of sixty points behind the twenty-nine points that earned first from Dodge City, the least amount of points the better. Along with the boys team rounding out with thirty-four points behind the first place finish of twenty-five points from Dodge City.
“My goal is to run around a 16:30 this year,” Ethan Fisher Varsity Junior said, after previously running a 17:25.2 to earn a second place finish in Hays.
There have been a few first-time senior additions to the cross country team, including Emma Tull, Nathanial Hubbard, Alexis Leon, Juan Aguilar, Taylor Pence and Angel Ayala.
“The last few years I’ve always wanted to run cross country, but was scared because I hadn’t done it earlier in high school. They reached out to me the day before season started and told me I should try it and that was the extra push I needed to step outside of my comfort zone and go for it,” Emma Tull, first year running senior, said. Tull and Hubbard are both swimmers on the women’s and men’s varsity swim teams, so intense conditioning is nothing new for them.
The cross country team hosted its first fundraiser of the school year at Wendy’s on Monday Sept. 10. They also participated in fundraisers at the farmers market over the summer. The team will be selling pumpkins later in the season to raise money as well. All of the fundraising will help to pay for meals after meets and hotel stays when the team travels to distant competitions.
The cross country varsity team will continue its season by traveling to Lawrence and competing at Kansas University’s Rim Rock Farm on Saturday and Sunday, Sept. 22 and 23, while the junior varsity team will travel to compete in Ulysses on Tuesday, Sept. 18.
Julie Calzonetti is a public service sophomore, you can contact her at calzonettij1@student.gckschools.com
Garden City High School 