Top-30 finish among Class 1A State elite ...

Kee girls cross country sophomore Katie Brennan makes her way along the course in her Class 1A State Cross Country Meet debut Saturday, October 29 at Lakeside Municipal Golf Course near Fort Dodge. Brennan finished within the top 20% of the Class 1A elite at the season grand finale, edging out two other runners by less than one second at the finish line to place 29th overall out of 143 runners in a time of 20:57.0.

“It was not her best time but certainly a very respectable effort,” Kee girls cross country coach Pat Wagner said. “Her presence at Fort Dodge represents a big step for our program. It was an important weekend for our program. The high school girls got to witness Iowa’s best distance runners in action and I think they came away with a feeling that we can compete at that level. More than that, I felt like we came home with a goal of running there as a team next season.”

The Class 1A season grand finale showed the strength of the State Qualifying Meet that the Kee girls competed in just over a week earlier in Cedar Falls, as fellow Upper Iowa Conference squad Central Elkader repeated as Class 1A team champion and the other two qualifying teams from Kee’s State Qualifying Meet, Hudson and Denver, finished second and fifth, respectively, in the 15-team Class 1A State Meet field. Freshman Kate Crawford from ACGC ran to the Class 1A individual State Championship with a clocking of 19:38.7. Junior Sheridan LaCoste of Rockford, the individual champion from Kee’s State Qualifying Meet, finished runner-up in a time of 19:41.0. Photo courtesy of Dave Davies.