Brown and Johnson lead Fredonia XC at Pre-State Invitational

OBSERVER Staff Report

ONTARIO — The Fredonia boys and girls cross country teams competed in the Pre-State Invitational at Wayne Central and came away with some positive results.

Out of the 37 schools that competed, the Fredonia girls placed 11th (out of the 26 full teams) and the boys came in 16th place (out of 29 full teams).

“It was an interesting race in that a lot of the top teams across the state raced,” Fredonia coach Carol Zirkle said. “You get to see where you stack up against the top runners in all the sections to see where you are. That doesn’t happen very often because we’re all racing on different courses. So it was a good opportunity to race against competition from all across the state to see where we measured up.”

Individually for the girls, Emily Brown came in 15th with a time of 20:39. Hannah Gullo placed 39th at 25:15, and was followed by teammates Savannah Lashbrook (83rd, 23:29), Anna Buchanan (103rd, 24:09) and Ashley Holt (114th, 24:29).

Josh Johnson was the top finisher for the boys with a time of 17:23 in 20th place. Diego Rey came in shortly after at 28th running at a time of 17:39; he was followed by teammates Alec Schrader (59th, 18:27), Kevin Redfield (142nd, 20:19) and Chris Annear (158th, 20:50).

“”I thought our teams raced well for the conditions,” Zirkle said of the warm Saturday race. “Josh Johnson ran an exception race; he got 20th place and was very competitive. Diego Rey ran a great race also. Emily Brown and Hannah Gullo ran very good races in a competitive race. They were in Division 2 and we were happy how those four raced. … It was a great opportunity to get on a new course against different competition … try out different strategy against runners that they’re not used to racing against.”

Fredonia’s next race will be on Tuesday against Dunkirk at Point Gratiot.