Indian Harriers compete at home meet

Indian Harriers compete at the Oskaloosa Invitational

The Oskaloosa Invitational was held on Tuesday at Edmundson Park.  The Oskaloosa girls finished 7th in the 11-team field with 178 points.  Brooke VanHouweling led the Indians with a 22nd place finish.  Kelsie Roquet and Stephanie Smith also had strong efforts for the Indians finishing in 34th and 39th places.  “I thought that our varsity girls had a pretty strong performance today, even with Brooke having an off day as she continues to deal with a sore calf.  We have continued to run in a pretty good pack in the 3-5 spots, we just need to continue to work our times downward.  We had 1 girl in the 17s tonight, 2 more in the 18s and 2 in the 19s.  Our course is definitely challenging and to run the way we did on our course was very encouraging. ”

The boys team finished 13th in the 15-field team with 351 points.  Max Holle was the top finisher for the boys with a 36th place finish in a time of 19:23.  “Our boys team showed some more improvement tonight, but we need to start to see our times drop more dramatically to be competitive.  We’ve been taking small steps but need to take bigger steps in the 2nd half of the season.  Overall though I was pretty happy with the effort tonight.”  In the JV races, Gabi Boxler was the top girls finishing in 23 rd place and Emory White was the top boy finishing in 90th place.

Skylar DeJong won the middle school meet, running the 1.5 mile course in 9:01, winning by almost 30 seconds.  Oskaloosa has 4 boys in the top 10.  Rachel Adams topped the middle school girls with a 16th place finish in a time of 12:01.  “I thought the middle school kids showed some good improvement tonight.  They ran a little further in distance this race and it was good to see how they handled the additional distance.  A great effort by all the kids.  I think we have some really fine runners in the middle school program.”

The Indians will run again at the Eddyville-Blakesburg invite next Tuesday.