Numerous cross country athletes from local schools qualified for state at the district and regional final race in Pella Thursday afternoon.

Pella’s girls qualified as a team for the 12th consecutive year, winning the 3A meet over ranked North Polk and Dallas Center Grimes. Senior Annika Pingel tells KNIA/KRLS Sports that their success was a product of hard work over the course of the season, and the Lady Dutch are peaking at the right time.

“We just trusted our coach, trusted our training process, and we knew if we ran our best, we’d come out on top,” Pingel says. “We definitely were looking at North Polk and DCG during the race knowing these were the girls to shoot for, and so when we figured out we beat both of them, we were really excited.”

PCM’s girls took 3rd place (89 points) in Class 2A to qualify for the first time in program history as a group. The Mustangs’ Paytan Schut and Kirstin Ives tell KNIA/KRLS Sports how special it was to earn the trip to Fort Dodge with the entire team.

“It’s a whole team thing, we have to a family, we have to be in it together, we have to encourage each other to want to do it, and the fact that a few years ago we didn’t even have enough people to go to state as a team, let along to actually make it as a team, so it’s really big to be running with the people we are running with,” Schut says.

Emma Kolb of Pella Christian took 4th place in class 2A, and is an individual qualifier for the Eagles.

On the boys side, Pella and Pleasantville earned individual qualifiers — Thomas Gauley of the Little Dutch finished 5th in 3A and Josh Pulse of the Trojans finished 15th in 2A. The state meet is Saturday, October 28th in Fort Dodge.

Other local results:
Pella Christian – 5th in 2A Boys (168 points) – Lucas Bandstra 17th, Nathan Vermeer 18th, Brayton Juffer 28th
Pella – 5th in 3A Boys (123 points) – Thomas Gauley
Lady Dutch – Caroline McMartin 2nd, Annika Pingel 5th, Ashley Blommers 7th, Chelsea Jorgensen 14th, Makayla Kruse 18th, Erica Halstead 20th
Knoxville – 12th in 3A boys, 9th in girls races
PCM – 11th in 2A boys, girls had five runners place in the top 25 (Kirstin Ives, Payton Schut, Baylee Smith, Megan Townley, and Klaire Jungling).
Pleasantville – 9th in 2A girls