GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (GRPS) — It was a soggy night for the varsity's 4th meet at the second OK Gold Jamboree at Forest Hills Eastern. It was the first varsity meet held at the course and the team had some great results. It was the first time since 2018 the team put all 5 scoring runners in the top 25 in a league jamboree.
Benne Anderson and Liam Walters led the boys team with 1st and 3rd place finishes, to match their finishes from Jamboree #1. Benne established the course record running 15:20, and Liam earned a personal record running 16:25.
Nik Williams, Kelton Hoover and Diego Barnaby continued to run 3rd thru 5th for the team, and were a little off their personal records for the year, running 18:39, 19:06 and 19:08 respectively, as the team took 5th out of 8 teams.
The boys finishing after the front 5 also had excellent runs. Joshua Kortenhoven had a big personal record achievement, dropping a whopping 1:31 in time to break 20 minutes with a 19:55 to finish 6th for the team.
Charlie Laughlin was 7th for the team and ran his second best time of the year at 20:37.
Lucas Bruno lowered his personal record by 12 seconds (21:11) to finish 8th for the team.
Alex Byrnes dropped his personal record 17 seconds, running 22:14.
The biggest personal record was turned in by Ben VanderLeek who ran an incredible 3:25 under his previous personal record, to lower his PR to 22:37.
Completing their first XC 5ks were Micah Rizkalla (25:41) and Krishna Mano (32:36).
In the girls race, Selma Anderson got her third win of the year running 19:02.
Reese Hansen was second in for the Bengals dropping her personal record 24 seconds (20:37) to finish 14th.
Enna Wainer also lowered her personal record 24 seconds (21:07) to finish 16th.
Jana Kalumbula continued the string of personal records with a 28 second personal record running 21:30 to finish 21st.
Campbell Hansen finished 25th in 21:46 to round out the scoring positions.
The personal records continued for the girls as Corena Willink ran a personal record of 2:33 to finish in 24:26.
Amelia Ferenczi ran a 1:15 personal record of 28:12.
Carmen Hernandez recorded the largest personal record of the night for the girls dropping her time from 45:11 to 40:10.
The team's next meet will be at Portage Public Schools on Saturday, October 8. Join us to cheer on our amazing athletes!
