M-ettes lone Class B Team in Fergus

The Malta M-ette cross country team participated at the Golden Eagle Cross Country Meet on Friday, September 14.

The meet was held at the Pine Meadows Golf Course. "This is a hilly course" the meet invitation stated.

The course surface was mostly grass and mowed wild grass, a surface that isn't as easy to run on as a harder surface such as dirt or gravel roads. So the team was up to quite a challenge here.

Fourteen schools participated. The competition would also be tough because most all of the participants were from larger schools, with one AA school from Billings, nine Class A schools, and three Class C schools from around the area. Malta was the only class B school to participate. There were over 140 runners between the varsity and JV girl's races.

With the sound of the gun, the varsity girls took off in a tight pack, and had to charge ahead, jockeying for position, but with the large number of girls, some of the M-ettes found them in the back of the pack and had to fight their way the rest of the race.

As the girls came through and talked about their experience, they all said it was really hard. There were so many hills and the grass was hard to run on. The competition was tough because they were running against girls that were in a whole different category of runner. This same feeling was felt by the JV girls who ran in the earlier race.

Though this race was very hard and no one posted personal bests, it helped to learn what it will be like to face tough competition at the state meet; we will be more mentally prepared. And we will also be physically stronger, because we have over a month to work on our conditioning.

Coach Fallon Handley summed it up like this, "The Fergus cross country meet is exactly the kind of meet we want our athletes competing in now so they are ready for the state meet in a few weeks. Lewistown hosted several class A schools which gave our runners the opportunity to race against different and tough competition. The continuous hills and grass make it a very challenging course which helped us focus on form and endurance."

"The M-ettes may have placed a little further back in the pack but overall they executed very well," Coach Thea Solberg said. "This team motivates each other, the girls that run together in practice push each other in competitions too."

The overall winner of the varsity girls race was Emberlyn Hoffman-Gasch of Billings Skyview High School, who ran in with a time of 19:43. Libby Nedens of Harden was second, with 20:27 and Grace Timm of Laurel was third with a time of 20:28. Billings Skyview was the first place team with 47 points. Malta placed eighth with 268 points out of the nine teams that fielded full teams for scoring. The overall winner of the JV girls race was Chayanna Wilson of Harden who ran in with 23:25. Harden also placed first as a team for JV with 24 points.

The M-ette Varsity placed as follows: Leslie Young took twenty-fifth place with a time of 24:03, Nikki Nicholson took fifty-fifth with a time of 26:42, Jillian O'Brien took fifty-eight with a time of 27:23, Kaycee Bond took sixty-fourth with a time of 28:53, Mira Heitland took sixty-sixth with a time of 29:46, and Taylor Gilkerson took sixty-eighth with a time of 31:24.

The M-ette JV placed as follows: Taylor Eggebrecht took seventy-first with a time of 39:08 and Chloe Hunter took seventy-third with a time of 41:54.