Lexington Flexes With Three C2 Victories, Woodland Repeats

A few hours into Saturday, the Minutemen and Minutewomen changed that.

Sophomore Addison Smith won the first race on what was a muddy, soggy Gans Creek Course.

She also helped Lexington win its first-ever state championship trophy in the sport- and the third year in a row that town located along Interstate 70, between Kansas City and Columbia, brought home a trophy when they headed back home.

Before 11 a.m., junior Chael Lichte won the title for Lexington in the boys' race.

He became the school's second-ever individual champion cross country champion after Smith and the first boys runner ever to do it.

The double win by one school is not something that happens often.

The last time it happened was in 2015 when Ste. Genevieve's Taylor Werner won the girls' title and Ben Naeger was the boys champion.

The last time it happened in Class 2?

You have to go back to 2009 when Caleb Sutton and Saga Barzowski won for Arcadia Valley. 

The city of Blue Springs had two champions in 2017, but it was split between a champ from Blue Springs and one from Blue Springs South.

Smith was an all-stater as a freshman, running 19:35.50 to take 19th.

This year, despite the worst conditions, she ran 19:14.90 to win the finals by nearly 12 seconds. It was also a personal best for the sophomore.

Smith won nine races this year and finished no worse than third in all of them.

Perhaps what made her win a little more impressive was the fact she was third at the district meet the weekend before and was about 17 seconds behind the winner and ran 20:03.63.

Lexington won the title with 106 points and beat West Platte, which had 124.

Incidentally, that was the same finish at the Class 2 District 4 meet. The Minutewomen had a 4:47 split between the No. 1 and 5 runner, while West Platte's gap was only 16 seconds. However, Lexington's average time was 21:09, more than 40 seconds better than West Platte's average.

Lexington had two other all-staters to join Smith on the podium.

Freshman Phoebe Engelbrecht was 10th with a personal-best 20:14.80 -- almost 25 seconds faster than any other race this year. Junior Tessa Lovell was 11th, two seconds behind Engelbrecht. Lovell made marked progress throughout the year and her 20:16.80 was a new personal record. It was also 3:06 faster than her first race of the season. 

The runner-up was New Covenant Academy's Clara Trent, running 19:26.30. The senior from the Springfield school was a four-time state qualifier and a three-time all-state runner. 

Last year's champion, Kensington Curd of Brentwood, took ninth. North Platte had two of the top six finishers in Chloe Heckman (third) and Brianna DeBord (sixth). After leading much of the race, Brookfield's Samantha Sharp crawled across the line, after giving everything she had and finishing completely on empty, in fifth. 

St. Louis Metro was third in the team hunt with 129 points. Lucy Luetkemeyer was third, the third all-state showing for the junior. Vivienne Rose was 20th for the Panthers.

This was the school's second state trophy -- matching a third in 2022.

Stockton was fourth with 160 points to take home the final girls' trophy. This was the second straight fourth for the Lady Tigers. The team's lone all-state runner was Lydia Bahr. The junior shaved more than a minute off her time from last year and took 30th place, earning the final medal. 

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