By Stephen Henderson

Patrick County High School entered 11 cross country runners in Saturday’s Knights Crossing Invitational at Green Hill Park in Salem. The boys’ team placed third in a field of 30 teams in the Black Division. Three Lady Cougar runners placed in the top-30 of the Black Division.

Zach Montgomery finished 10th with a time of 17:36; Monroe Morse was two seconds behind in 11th in17:38, a new personal record (PR) for him; Kristian Reynolds was 18th with a PR of 17:57; Jared Biedrycki placed 39th in 18:40; and Brandon Rohrbach was 125th in 20:47.

Tristian Moore scored a PR of 21:53.

In the girls’ race, Macie Rogers finished eighth in 21:27. Armonte Carter was 26th with a time of 22:29 and Ashton Collins finished 30th in 22:44. Arielle Taylor came in 69th in 24:24.

Middle school runner Vanessa Mabe was 98th with a time of 28:38.

“I was super excited about this meet,” said Coach Lynne Deckel. “My biggest concern was positioning and remaining competitive without burning out too early. All of our runners executed it well,” she explained.

“Everyone was competitive from the gun and performed well, either for the team or themselves individually. This meet is also the regional course that we will be on later in the season, and since we are hoping to qualify for states, it gave us a good look at the conditions we will be dealing with and some of the competition,” she added.

“If we keep up the hard work, I think we can do some big things when it matters most,” Deckel said. “I was especially impressed with our top two boys and how they worked together throughout the whole race,” she added.

“I saw a lot of strength out of the girls in the second half of the race as well. Overall, we set ourselves up nicely and as long as we keep working hard, we could see some super fast results. It was a great day to be a Cougar XC runner, and I couldn’t be prouder,” Deckel said.