By John Rittenhouse
Hills-Beaver Creek-Ellsworth-Edgerton cross country squads locked up team championships during the Red Rock Conference meet ran at the Slayton Country Club Tuesday.
The Patriot boys' varsity team won its second consecutive RRC title during the meet, and the boysÕ junior varsity squad also came out on top of their field.
Patriot coach Tom Goehle was happy with the way his junior varsity boys competed, but he was proud of the way his varsity team performed while repeating as the meet champion.
"These kids have been working awfully hard for two and one-half months for an opportunity to win a conference championship, and you donÕt take something like that for granted just because we won this meet last year. This is a great accomplishment. IÕm really proud of these guys," he said.
H-BC-E-E scored 22 points to best Mountain Lake-Butterfield-Odin (45), Southwest Christian (80), Adrian (85) and Southwest Star Concept-Sioux Valley-Round Lake-Brewster (123) in the team standings.
The top-10 finishers in each varsity race make the All-RRC team at the league meet, and the Patriot boys locked up five positions on the roster.
Tyler Bush (first in 16:38), Zach Hadler (second in 16:59), Kale Wiertzema (fifth in 17:28), Todd Alberty (sixth in 17:30) and Greg Van Batavia (eighth in 17:38) cracked the All-RRC roster and made contributions to H-BC-E-EÕs winning team tally.
Lee Jackson and Derek Haak placed 15th and 16th in 18:37 and 18:47 without influencing the scoring.
Devin DeBoer led the Patriot boys' junior varsity team to its title by winning the race individually with a time of 16:47.
John Sandbulte (second in 16:57), Jared Drenth (seventh in 17:54), Michael Bos (eighth in 18:30) and Justin Hinks (11th in 21:31) also ran with the junior varsity squad.
Adam Finke and Grant Hoogendoorn placed first and fifth with respective 6:53 and 7:03 times in the boysÕ junior high race.
Mya Mann and Erika Fransen finished 12th and 15th with respective times of 18:21 and 18:36 in the girls' varsity race.
The H-BC-E-E runners will compete at the Section 3A meet in Slayton Oct. 24.