FORTVILLE — Mt. Vernon won one title and nearly had two at Saturday’s Mt. Vernon Girls Cross Country Invitational, which also served as the Hancock County meet.
The Marauders won the county title for the fourth straight year and were runner-up to Cathedral by just six points in the 10-team invitational.
Greenfield-Central sophomore Josie Kinnaman was the county’s individual champion and placed third overall with a time of 19:34.53 for the 5K course. She was the lone local runner to run under 20 minutes.
Edgewood’s Hannah Crain won the race in 19:15.56.
For the county meet, Mt. Vernon scored 23 points. Greenfield-Central was second with 46 and New Palestine had 61. Eastern Hancock did not have enough runners for a team score, but did have one of the top finishers in sophomore Sydney Johnson, 10th overall and fourth in the county with a time of 21:15.30.
Cathedral won the invitational with 59 points.
It was a tight battle in the top four. Mt. Vernon scored 65, Whiteland 72 and Edgewood 76. Greenfield-Central (112), New Palestine (150) and Frankton (195) followed. Along with the Royals, Morristown and Lapel did not have enough runners for a team total.
“We had six girls who ran better in this meet than last year, some of them by minutes,” Mt. Vernon coach Lydgia Palmer said. “I’m looking at growth across training, and summer, and track season, and this is a very encouraging start. For a lot of girls it was their first race of the season.”
The Marauders ran without one of their top runners, Emma Gale, and also had two-time county champion Hannah Hauser running her first race of the season.
“I want to have a team that is not one person,” Palmer added. “I want a team 12 to 15 deep. Someone is always going to have an off day, or be sick. It’s great to have Hannah, but I saw a lot out of Makenna [Laffey] and Julia [Iserloth] and we needed that. It gave some people an opportunity to step up. We’re a team and we’ll be only as good as people that step up when they need to.”
Laffey and Iserloth were second and third, respectively, in the county portion and fifth and seventh, overall. Laffey, a sophomore, finished in 20:10.78 and Iserloth, a senior, had a time of 20:49.80.
For the county race, the top 10 finishers earned All-Hancock County honors.
Six of the top 10 were from Mt. Vernon, following Laffey and Iserloth, a not-at-full-strength Hauser was sixth in 21:23.87. Lillian Quinn placed seventh in 21:47.94. Chesnie Willis was eighth with a time of 21:53.24 and senior Ella Sinn was 10th in 22:05.22.
“They were awesome,” Palmer added. “They stepped up. For Ella Sinn, this is her senior year. She ran this race last year in 27 minutes, and she ran 22 minutes [Saturday]. Putting in the work during track season, in the summer, and really being healthy and taking the steps to build the mileage has been really important.”
Greenfield-Central’s Adalyn Cole was fifth in 21:17.76. New Palestine’s Addison Uhl also earned all-county honors by finishing ninth in 21:56.
