Bulldogs advance to state meet

By Fred Kroner

For the 10^th time in the past 12 years, the Mahomet-Seymour girls’ cross-country program will be represented at state by its full team.

M-S placed fifth in the Saturday (Oct. 30) IHSA Class 2A sectional at Decatur’s Hickory Point Golf Course. The top seven schools in the 18-team field advanced to state.

The top five team finishers were all state-ranked in the final 2A poll, produced by milesplit.com.

Third-ranked Chatham Glenwood was the meet champion with a composite score of 54 points. The runner-up was 20^th-ranked Mascoutah (116 points), followed by 11^th-ranked Mount Zion (138 points), 18^th-ranked Waterloo (156 points) and 14^th-ranked Mahomet-Seymour (171 points).

Also securing team berths at state were Highland (175 points) and Troy Triad (203 points).

The top four Bulldog finishers at the sectional represented each of the four grade levels and they were tightly packed within 32.61 seconds of one another.

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Sophomore Ava Boyd led the way, placing 22^nd. Her 3-mile time was 20 minutes, 13.65 seconds.

Following her were freshman Chloe Bundren (27^th in 20:23.49), junior Callie Jansen (28^th in 20:23.75) and senior Elizabeth Sims (39^th in 20:36.26).

There were 135 runners in the girls meet.

“The girls showed great perseverance as the race course conditions were a sloppy mess by the third race of the day (the site hosted a Class 1A sectional earlier on Saturday),” M-S coach Jama Grotelueschen said.

Among all girls who competed at the sectional, Boyd was sixth among sophomores, Bundren was eighth among freshmen, Jansen was seventh among juniors and Sims was 10^th among seniors.

Rounding out the lineup were senior Emily Bednar (67^th in 21:40.78), senior Klein Powell (68^th in 21:41.62) and freshman Ava Jansen (73^rd in 21:50.69).

“Bednar gets the mental toughness award as she raced nearly half of her 3 miles in one shoe,” Grotelueschen said. “Bundren capped off her race with a slide through the finish line.”

M-S will return to action at 11 a.m. on Saturday (Nov. 6) in the state finals at Detweiller Park, in Peoria.

Overall, this will be M-S’ 18^th team appearance at state. The best team finishes for the girls were for fourth-place in 2007 and in 2017.