Rockhurst, Blue Springs 1-2; Mugeche is King of Forest Park
The Boys Green Division at the Forest Park Cross Country Festival was a little more of a sure thing this year than in years past. Blue Springs senior Victor Mugeche was a very strong favorite coming into the race and he put on a clinic under the hot sun for the gobs of fans in attendance. But it wasn't won from the gun, by any means. An unknown to the average Missouri cross country fan from Fayetteville, AR, Camren Fischer, decided to make it an interesting race, pushing with Mugeche all the way to the 2 mile before tasting the dust that Mugeche left in his wake as he unleashed a deadly 3rd mile to break away. Mugeche appeared to shut it down about 100 meters before the finish line or else it could have been an even faster time than the senior ultimately ran - that time being 15:27. "I was trying to just go out there, have fun, and compete," said Mugeche post-race, "There's a lot of guys who come out here I don't know about so I just wanted to see what was going to happen. I even had [Fischer] come with me and that guy put up a really good effort." This dominant performance could very well vault him into the #1 spot on our MoMileSplit Subjective Rankings as Ryan Riddle remained idle this week, but with two more races next week for the duo, anything can happen. Oaklee Hauschild from Blue Springs was third on the day with his second straight sub-16:00 performance and Rockhurst's Tom Seitzer was a strong fourth overall in 16:03.
As for the team results, Rockhurst continued to silence the critics as they pulled off the victory over Blue Springs and St. Thomas Aquinas (KS) in the Boys Green Division. This result, paired with the results from the Girls Green Division race, provides us with this assertion: This is a Kansas City state, we St. Louisans and CoMo and SWMO and SEMOers are just living in it. Led by the aforementioned Seitzer, Rockhurst put its stellar top 3 in the Top 16 with Peter Campbell taking 10th and Andrew Connor taking 16th. Rockhurst also won the Greg Wilson Classic and, after losing a few of their top runners to graduation, they look like they could be ready to repeat as the team champions in Class 4 this November. Chris Auckley spoke with their top 3 boys below:
In the White Division, Smithville put together an impressive performance headlined by their top 3 boys taking 1st, 2nd, and 4th. Jonah Palmer, a sophomore, was the overall winner in 16:55 and was followed by Luke Termorshuizen in 2nd and Mark Krueger in 4th. Parkway Central's Gottlieb Gerstenecker was 3rd. Smithville scored 68 for the team victory with Pembroke Hill in 2nd in 124.