As fall is filled with many sports and activities, one in particular is cross country. During the fall, Lewis Cass has 4 different cross country teams. These are junior high girls, junior high boys, high school girls, and high school boys. The frontrunner this year for Cass looks to be the high school boys team. 

     Cross country is a sport in which all runners run a 5k course, or about 3.1 miles. To have a team in a meet, you must have 5 scoring runners. 7 runners make up a varsity team. In a meet, the lowest teams’ score wins. Each place is given the score you placed, i.e., first place is 1 point, second is 2 points, third is 3, and so on. The sixth and seventh place runners are there in case of a tie in scores. Lewis Cass has 7 varsity runners and 10 junior varsity runners. At most meets, there are two separate races, but some meets just have one big race. 

     The Lewis Cass boys cross country is coached by Don Bonsett; this is his 53rd year coaching cross country here at Lewis Cass. The high school boys team this year has 6 seniors. The varsity consists of Enoch Hines (senior), Felix Palafox (senior), Cole McCloskey (senior), Braxton Armstrong (senior), Kale Skiles (freshman), Kaiden Hughes (freshman), and Gavin Griffin (freshman). Even while having 4 seniors in the top 7, the Kings are looking promising in the future years.

     So far this year, the boys team has had 8 meets. Of the 61 teams they have faced, they have beaten 53 of them, and lost to 8 of them. Some of these wins and losses are against the same teams, of course. One of the meets in particular, the Jacob Graf Memorial Invite, was 5 of those losses. We didn’t do as well this meet since we were running without any of our freshmen, so our 9th runner became our 5th for this meet. Without this meet, the Kings are 43-3 this season.

     Coming off a win this past Tuesday, the Kings continued to emerge victorious this Saturday as well. This past Tuesday, the Kings ran at Carroll against 6 other teams. The Kings main competition at this meet was their main sectional competitor – the Pioneer Panthers. The Kings won this meet by having 4 in the top 10. The Kings also won this past Saturday when they traveled to Tipton. Out of the 9 teams competing, the Kings got first. Beating the second place team – Hamilton Heights – by 11 points. The whole varsity team placed in the top 25 this meet.

     With only 3 more meets until sectionals, the Kings are nearing the end of the season. This week the Kings run at Wabash on Tuesday and Benton Central on Saturday. The following Saturday, the Kings will return to Benton Central for the Hoosier Conference meet. After that, the Kings will set their goals high and try to become sectional champions. The Kings have only won sectionals two times ever, in 1979 and 1982. However, they will have to beat very skilled teams such as Northwestern, Maconaquah, and Pioneer to bring home another sectional championship. They are also hoping to move onto the semi-state meet this year. This would be only the fourth time the Kings have advanced to the semi-state meet.