Packer girls run well at Owatonna Invite

Published 10:04 pm Thursday, October 6, 2011

The Austin girls cross country team put up another solid performance when they finished fourth out of 14 teams at the Owatonna Invite Thursday.

Austin eighth grader Madison Overby came through with her best race of the season as she finished in second place with a time of 14:50. Overby finished 1.4 seconds by behind Albert Lea’s Chrissy Monson, who is ranked No. 7 in Class ‘AA.’

“We told Madison to run with Chrissy on the surges and she executed that plan. She was right with her the whole race,” Austin head coach Tony Einertson said. “Madison’s improved tremendously over the year and she’s a complete competitor. She hates getting beat and she’ll do whatever she has to do to get up there.”

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The Packer girls placed ahead of six Big Nine teams and the third place Huskies were the only team in front of them as Rosemount won the meet.

“It was an essentially a run down of the Big Nine meet and we’re really looking forward to that meet now,” Einertson said. “If the girls run there like they did today, they’ll be right in there.”

Justice Tabor ran a career-best time of 15:43.2 as she took 18th. Haley Splinter finished 10th and McKenzie Besel took 11th.

The Austin boys took eighth place as Nate Schwab took 27th and Andrew Baker took 31st.

“Nate got off to kind of a slow start and he probably passed thirty guys,” Einertson said. “He just needs to work on starting faster.”

Sandaval Lopez broke his career best time by almost 40 seconds in his second varsity race for Austin.

Austin girls results: Madison Overby (second, 14:50.0); Haley Splinter (10th, 15:43.2); McKenzie (11th, 15:53.2); Justice Tabor (18th, 16:02.1); Jenna Grabau (92nd, 18:20.3); Martha McDermott (93rd, 18:20.7)

Austin boys results: Nate Schwab (27th, 17:29.5); Andrew Baker (31st, 17:33.4); Mason Wollersheim (69th, 18:30.5); Sandaval Lopez (70th, 18:32.8); Micah Kelly (89th, 19:15.3); Gabe Ramirez (94th, 20:17)