The four Tulip City cross country teams all placed runner-up in their respective divisions at the Pella Dutch Cross Country Invitational held Saturday morning at Central College.
Pella’s #3 in 3A boys and #5 girls were both narrow 2nd place team finishers to #2 North Polk and #17 ADM respectively in the large school race, while the Eagles finished behind Mid-Prairie in both of the small schools competitions.
Chase Lauman was a narrow runner-up individual for Pella (16:12.1) and Raegan Snieder was the fastest girls finisher (20:03.5), also good for 2nd among the large school competition.
It was a strong day for Dutch freshmen who ran their first varsity 5K races as well, including Canaan Dunham of the Pella boys, who placed himself 5th among the personal best races in program history (16:13.9) and shattered the previous freshman record held by Class of ’22 graduate Josiah Wittenberg by 11 seconds. Marissa Farebee (20:11.2) is already the 6th fastest 9th grade girl in school history, with fellow classmate Lizzie Neumann (21:27.1) opening at 13th best.
Nathan VanderWaal had a strong 5th place finish among the boys (16:35.2), and Autumn Blink (20:15.8) was 7th.
Kaden Van Wyngarden of Pella Christian was 9th among individuals regardless of class (17:05.5) to lead the Eagles to their 2nd place team score in the boys small school division. Jaclyn Holmes was 25th in a deep girls field in all classes (22:29.4) to pace P.C.’s runner up girls.
Pella returns to action at Grinnell on Tuesday, and the Eagles head to Ames and Iowa State University on Thursday.
