GREENFIELD — Sandwiched in between tough meets at Columbus North and Cascade, Greenfield-Central’s lone home girls cross country meet, Cougarpalooza, comes during what head coach Scott Burton refers to as the team’s “down week.”
That, along with quality competition over the years, has led to a home meet victory drought.
On Wednesday at Brandywine Park, led by three top-five finishers, they finished at the top of the leaderboard with a score of 26 points, followed by Warren Central (37), Rushville (81) and Roncalli (81).
“It’s nice to come out here and compete well. It’s been a while since we’ve challenged for a championship in this meet,” Burton said. “We’ve had some good quality teams here. Warren Central is a sectional opponent, so it was nice to see their top runners out here to see where we are at right now.”
Leading the way for the Cougars was freshman Josie Kinnaman. Her 5K time of 20:27 bested the field by over a minute.
“She’s [Kinnaman] come on really well,” Burton said. “Still working on some race strategies with her, but she’s been our No. 1.”
Warren Central’s Madelin Nouel prevented the Cougars from taking the top three spots with a second-place time of 21:32.
Following her were G-C’s Lexie Copeland (21:55) and Adalyn Cole (21:58).
Their placements and time being so close together was something that the Cougars were working on throughout the race.
For Burton, and the team, Wednesday’s race was a chance to run together in packs, something he believes will help the team come postseason time.
Along with Copeland and Cole finishing as a pair, Kendall Barrett, Emaline Capen, and Taylor Cooksey ran the majority of the race together and earned eighth, 10th, and 11th for the Cougars, respectively.
Barrett finished with a time of 22:59, Capen’s time was 23:15 and Cooksey’s was 23:31.
“With it being hotter and in the middle of the week, we weren’t really shooting for times, it was more about competing and trying to work in packs as a team. You saw that with Josie and Lexie early in the race, then as the race went on Josie did her thing and Lexie and Adalyn ran together coming in. Kendall, Emaline, and Taylor all ran together, and were in close proximity, too,” Burton said. “The more we can get that pack together, the more it’s going to help us going forward.”
Rounding out the team scoring for G-C was senior Isabelle Hunt with a 27th-place finish and time of 26:02.
“We were kind of taking this week as our down week. This has always been a week to just get back to our basics and try to push through some things,” Burton said. “So seeing them run as well as they did, and compete was nice. It’s all about just getting better as a team as we move forward.”
