Parkway West, Helias Catholic Girls Continue Success; Hatley Upsets Hershenow
West Plains can boast two very good varsity teams and, on the girls side, Kaylee Hatley has been leading the way these past couple of weeks. Hatley headlines a three-headed monster that has been without one of its head (Mia Harris) lately, but is a scary good team when they are all together. At Hancock, she pulled off what some may call a bit of an upset as she took down one of Missouri's premier up-and-comers in Chloe Hershenow (Parkway West) for the victory, running 19:28 for the title. McKenzie Bergman is that third head for the Zizzers and she was 6th on the day. Behind Hershenow was Lindbergh phenom Abigail Juedemann. She has run well on the tough courses this year, finishing first at Blackburn Park, second at Parkway Central, and now third at Hancock, the two latter races being 19:48 and 19:35. Steelville junior Allie Gibbs, the Class 2 superstar, ran up in the Class 4 race and did not disappoint, taking 4th in 19:44. She led early and is showing that she is not afraid to go for it in any race. Parkway West took the team title easily, beating Lindbergh by 24 points. Kirkwood girls were a mere 1 point behind Lindbergh as those two will surely be battling it out in late October for a spot at the state meet.
Helias Catholic continued their magical run in Class 3 as they came down to do battle with the Eastern MO Class 3 teams and won again. Abby Hake was the leader of the team again with her 7th place finish. The pack remained relatively strong, but has been much stronger in past races. Look for Helias to regroup in the coming weeks and continue to compete for the Class 3 crown. Sarah Moore of Ste. Genevieve was the individual winner running 20:17 for the 14 second win over Herculaneum's Nautica Stricklin. Moore can now boast two big invitational victories after also having won the Gold Division at Forest Park. It appears she is back on the right track this season.
The Class 1a-2a race was small this year, but it featured a 1-2 finish from Jordan Heacock and Anna Heacock of Jefferson R-VII. They were the only 2 under 22:00 in this race. Father Tolton won the team title, but New Haven did not field a full team in this one and we probably would have pegged them to have won had it have ended up differently.