The Lady Panthers closed out the season with a top-10 finish at the Class 3A Cross Country Championship on Saturday, while the E-gals gained valuable experience that has them hopeful for the future.
Daviess County finished 10th in a field of 37, posting an average time of 20:57.20 with Lucy Spaw leading the way in 38th place (20.06.60). Sally Tadwell followed Spaw in 73rd (20:50.00), while Bentlei Stallings finished 87th (21:12.50), Blakely Greer followed in 88th (21:12.80) and Mallory Raines finished 99th (21:24.10) to round out the Lady Panthers top-five.
Head Coach Josh Bratcher said while they didn’t finish as highly placed as they might have liked, he was proud of the way the girls battled through some adversity they faced throughout the course.
“All of them had a strong race,” Bratcher said. “I definitely think the second half of the course with the rolling hills got to a lot of them, just mentally and physically. But we actually had a couple fall back a little bit further than what we wanted, but then we had some others that stepped up and ran faster and were able to pick up that slack.”
Bratcher was also proud of his seniors, Micah Sagar who finished 108th (21:32.90) and Kayley Payne who finished 157th (22:21.50). While neither of them place in their top-five, Bratcher said that their leadership has been a key factor in their success and that they will be missed next season.
“They’ve been kind of a staple to the leadership of the team,” Bratcher said. “My big thing with the team is it doesn’t always matter where you finish on the team to be the leader and they’ve definitely stepped up and been able to lead the team and keep them going strong throughout the season.”
Bratcher is happy with the experience that Daviess County gained competing at the state level and is looking forward to his team using that going forward in hopes of returning to the state race next season.
“This year I think was a good kind of an eye opener [to show] we can actually do some decent times on this course,” Bratcher said. “We had mostly sophomores and freshmen running this year when it came to our top-seven, so it’s going to be a lot of the same next year.”
Apollo on the other hand finished 31st with an average time of 22:27.60, putting them just past Owensboro (35th, 23:13.76) who was led by Kiley Palmer’s 86th place finish (21:11.70). Senior Ahmira Pickett led the way for the E-gals in 51st (20:25.90), while Adyson Mattingly finished 170th (22:30.90), Ava Falloway finished 179th (22:40.50), Chloe Sandefur finished 181st (22:46.90) and Kirii Mattingly finished 225th (23:53.80) to round out their top-five.
Head Coach Charlie Shoulta was thrilled with Pickett’s performance to finish just outside the top-50, saying that this was the cherry on top of a strong season for her that he’s super proud of. As for the team as a whole, Shoulta is happy to see the girls program continuing to improve at another state competition.
“We’re young and building a program up is not an overnight thing,” Shoulta said. “It’s not even an over a year thing, but since I took over three years ago we’ve progressed every year. We took another step forward today. I was really pleased with how all the girls ran today. They all battled. They know that this is just the start.”
Shoulta said that while he hates comparing the girls team to the boys because he’s sure it annoys the girls, having the proof of success that the boys have had in recent years has led them to try to model the girls program after it. Since Shoulta took over the cross country programs at Apollo three years ago they were able to make the boys cross country team a force to be reckoned with and he feels like the girls team is on its way there as well.
“Quite frankly, our boys program four or five years ago wasn’t anywhere close to where it is now,” Shoulta said. “It’s taken years to get it to where we want it to be and it was one step at a time. On a small micro scale, I think our girls are very much capable of racing like our boys do where we pack up and run as a team. The last two or three races of the season the girls have really bought into that… Hopefully this race gives them confidence of what the future holds and if they want to take that next step up it will come through hard work. I think every girl on our team is willing to do that. I’m excited about the future of our girls program.”
