Eagles’ girls XC team ninth at River Valley Invitational

Sauk Prairie’s girls cross country team finished in ninth place at the star-studded, 21-team River Valley Invite last Saturday. Madison West won the team title with 48 points, while the Eagles finished with 231 points. “The River Valley Invite was loaded with talent and great teams, some pretty hot racing, and some big lessons for our cross country team,” Eagles’ coach Andy Sherman said. “On a day the sunny weather hit the mid 80s by our last race, our team fought the heat and some of the best runners in the state to drop some pretty significant amounts of time for many of our athletes.” Sauk Prairie was led by sophomore Aaliyah Bermudo, who ran her fastest time of the season, covering the 5000-meter course in 20 minutes, 53 seconds and finishing 24th overall. Sophomore Evie Bahe was 35th (21:28), sophomore Savannah Liegel was 50th (21:58), junior Clarissa Brickl was 60th (22:18) and junior Charlotte Gregg was 62nd (22:24). Sauk Prairie’s boys were 13th out of 20 schools. Madison La Follette won the team title with 90 points, while the Eagles finished with 380 points. Junior Austin Smith set a new personal-best time of 18:26 and finished 60th individually to lead the Eagles.  “He has had a bit of a nagging injury and we weren’t even sure he was going to run,” Sherman said of Smith. “He gutted it out and ran a very even and consistent race.” Junior Jacob Wiegmann, who set his second PR in two races, was 63rd in 18:35.  Senior Charlie Endres was 83rd (19:15), junior Hunter Brensike was 86th (19:32), and senior John Fabian was 88th (19:38).  “As we continue to train and these three work together, they will continue to stay together making them stronger and bringing our scores down even more,” Sherman said.  Overall, Sherman was extremely happy how his team performed. “I felt our teams tried to put themselves out there at the beginning of each race,” he said. “We may have gone a little too hard with the excitement of such big races and the talent they ran with, but it shows what is possible when the conditions and our training is ripe for us to be at our best.  “I am very happy with the aggressive nature of our starts and once we get it dialed in a bit more, all of our runners will continue to improve.”