By John Rittenhouse
A smaller band of Patriots competed for Hills-Beaver Creek-Ellsworth at the Rock County Invitational cross country meet staged in Adrian Thursday.
With a varsity volleyball match scheduled in Westbrook that night and the fact that the H-BC-E football team would be playing its biggest game of the season the next night, the other members of both programs decided to skip the meet.
H-BC-E did have representation in three races, but no Patriots ran at the varsity level.
Eight runners competed in the boys' junior varsity race.
Lee Jackson, Nathan Fick and Greg Van Batavia led the way by placing 10th, 11th and 13th in 15:01, 15:15 and 15:18 respectively.
Kale Wiertzema and Derek Haak placed 18th and 29th with respective 15:30 and 16:24 times to cap the team effort.
Nathan Mahone (39th in 16:46), Paul Jess (47th in 17:31) and Jared Drenth (52nd in 17:50) didnÕt influence the team scoring.
Six more boys ran in the junior high race.
Devin DeBoer, Kerry Fink and John Sandbulte cracked the top 10 by finishing fifth, seventh and eighth with respective 6:09, 6:17 and 619 efforts.
Adam Finke and Grant Hoogendoorn placed 16th and 18th in 6:42 and 6:44 to pad the team tally.
Justin Hinks didnÕt contribute to the team effort after placing 27th in 8:11.
H-BC-E's Amanda Tilstra and Kerri Fransman finished sixth and 12th with times of 7:06 and 7:19 as H-BC-E's lone entries in the girls' junior high race.
According to Patriot coach Tom Goehle, running against strong competition helped all of his runners Thursday.
"All of the kids ran as good of times as they have all year or better at this meet. I think running with the bigger schools helped us because it forced us to run harder. As a runner, it's a little bit different perspective when you are chasing people," he said.