By Fred Kroner
Senior Joseph Scheele on Tuesday (Oct. 12) became the 14th Mahomet-Seymour athlete to win an individual conference cross-country championship in the 52-year history of the program.
Scheele ran to victory in the Apollo Conference meet at Effingham Country Club, with a winning 3-mile time of 15 minutes, 46.2 seconds.
His margin of victory in the 68-runner field was 4.2 seconds.
In the five years M-S has been a member of the Apollo, the school has now produced three individual conference champions.
With four runners placing among the top seven on Tuesday, the Bulldogs were the dominant team in the seven-school event.
M-S, ranked sixth in the milesplit.com Class 2A state poll, annexed its third consecutive conference team crown, with a composite score of 29 points. Runner-up Taylorville had 77 points and third-place Mount Zion came in with 86 points.
In their last nine conference cross-country meets, the Bulldogs have finished first eight times. For 15 consecutive years, the boys’ program has placed no lower than second at a conference cross-country meet.
The Bulldogs’ other all-Apollo Conference runners were Kyle Nofziger (fourth in 16:00.4), Jonah Singer (fifth in 16:20.5) and Ben Wallace (seventh in 16:29.5).
Nofziger is the fourth M-S athlete ever to earn all-conference honors all four years in cross-country. The others were Neil Mathis (1981-84), Dan Nielsen (1987-90) and Andrew Walmer (2013-16).
Scheele captured all-conference honors for the third time and Singer is a two-time honoree.
The next seven Bulldog finishers after Wallace all ran the course in less than 18 minutes.
Taylor Fan was 12th (17:02.6), Hayden Grotelueschen was 13th (17:02.9), John Tender was 17th (17:19.9), Avery Seaman was 19th (17:24.5), Gabe Wisnasky was 24th (17:43.2), Gabe Difanis was 25th (17:51.7) and Gage Williams was 26th (17:56.7).
Other M-S competitors were: Lukas Nykaza (28th in 18:05.6), Karsten Waisath (29th in 18:12.7), Grant Smysor (35th in 18:30.8), Blake Dillman (42nd in 19:09.5), Zach Wilcoski (52nd in 20:39.5), Jaxon Themanson (55th in 20:53.3), Will Slezak (56th in 21:06.5), Alex Carpenter (59th in 21:49.7) and Kaleb Kasper (61st in 22:22.0).
The conference meet also served as the Bulldogs’ Senior Night.
Other athletes besides Scheele who ran in their final regular-season meet were Nofziger, Singer, Fan, Tender, Seaman, Wisnasky and Waisath.
M-S will return to action on Saturday (Oct. 23) in a Class 2A regional meet at Olney.
