Shorthanded Red Oak Cross Country team competes at meets

In their biggest two meets of the season to date, the Red Oak cross country team were forced to compete without all of their top runners.

Saturday, at the Harlan Invitational, the Tigers were missing both of their top runners in the boys’ competition due to illness.

Ingvid Skorpen was the only medalist of the day finishing 13th in the varsity girls’ 4,000- meter race with a time of 16:34.

Michaela Griffen had her worst outing of the year, as she usually leads the girls’ team.

“(Griffen) is still recovering,” Red Oak head coach Curt Adams said about Griffen’s recent illness. “I expect she will be back in form soon.”

As a team, the Tigers’ girls finished 12 of 13 with everyone (with the exception of Griffen) running personal best times.

The boys were missing Ian Medeiros and Danny Carlson to lead the team, also due to illness.

The seven remaining runners stayed close together placing between 60th and 78th places, led by Dylan Berry (60th – 20:01), Colin Streicher (64th – 20:25), and Brandon Bergren (65th – 20:25).

The boys finished 11th of the 12 teams, beating Riverside by 31 points.

Glenwood won the boys’ meet with 62 points, edging Woodbine and Harlan won as a team in the girls’ race scoring 52 points, Griswold finished second with 94.

Last Tuesday, the teams ran at the Creston Invitational in meet that hosted 26 teams.

The boys were missing three of their top five runners and finished 11th of 12 in the “A” group.

The “A” teams included Glenwood, Thomas Jeff-erson, Atlantic, Clarinda, Clarke, Creston, Kuemper, Norwalk, Perry, Shenan-doah, Winterset and Red Oak.

Berry led the boys finishing in 59th with a time of 20:36. The remaining boys finished between 60th and 77th places.

“We’ve been running pretty close to each other lately,” Adams said. “I just keep telling them that now they just need to speed up a little bit and move forward as a team.”

Skorpen finished 13th for the girls with a time of 18:29. The next Tiger girl to finish was Caitlyn Soden in 56th, with a time of 20:15.

Griffen was unable to race last Tuesday due to illness.

The Atlantic girls won the “A” side of the meet with 63 points, while the Glenwood Rams topped Kuemper, 43-54, for first place.

“This week would be a good gague for us because we get to see a lot of our conference if we stay healthy,” Adams said. “From here we start running more with the Hawkeye 10 and the best of southwest Iowa.”

This week, the Tigers will have some time to recuperate only running at Shenandoah on Thursday.