It was a cold autumn day but that didn't stop area high school cross country runners as they hit the course for yet another meet this time with plenty of Kanzaland area teams competing in the Sabetha Cross Country Invite, yesterday.

The highlights and top finishes for the Kanzaland area runners cam mostly from the girls competition with five of the top 10 finishers coming from Kanzaland area schools. After multiple top three finishes this season, Horton Charger senior, Leah Murata raced her way to a victory running a time of 15:52.2 on the day, just shy of 20 seconds better than the second place finisher. Leah has enjoyed success running this season and for the years past and now has her sights set on a first place finish at the Delaware Valley league meet coming up next Thursday.

A fellow runner of Murata in the DVL that has enjoyed plenty of success this season, also, is freshman ACCHS Tiger, Madison Bissell. Madison had the second highest finish of any Kanzaland area runner on the day as she placed third. Madison has enjoyed success throughout the year just as a freshman finishing in the top three or five multiple times.

Highlighting the rest of the top 10 for the girls race was Connor Schultz of Riverside who finished fourth place, Sabetha Bluejay, Taryn Schuette placed seventh on the day, while Connor Strader of Holton took home a eighth place finish.

For the girls teams, it was Sabetha Bluejays girls yet again finishing with a top finish as they register a second place finish at their home meet. Rounding out the top three teams was ACCHS who took home third place at the meet.

On the boys side it was only one Kanzaland area team finishing in the top three and it was the host school Sabetha taking third place. Unlike the top 10 for the girls competition which was highlighted by multiple Kanzaland area runners the boys competition only saw one Kanzaland runner finish in the top 10, that was Sabetha Bluejay, Trenton Cox placing sixth.

The other top performers for the boys were Jeff West Tiger, Micah LaCrone who finished twelfth and Colin Lierz of Nemaha Valley placing thirteenth.

As cross country regular season comes to a close teams now turn their sights on the their respective league meets coming up next week.

For full Sabetha Invite results (click here)

For photos of the Sabetha Invite, visit the photos page (click here)