By John Rittenhouse
Busy schedules didn't keep the Hills-Beaver Creek-Ellsworth boys' cross country teams from having a banner day at the Worthington Turkey Trot Saturday.
Most of the H-BC-E varsity runners were helping the Patriot football team beat Lake Benton in Ellsworth the night before, but one couldn't tell by the way things turned out Saturday.
The H-BC-E varsity and junior high boys' squads wrapped up team championships during a very impressive showing.
"These Saturday morning meets are tough on some of our guys because they play football on Friday nights," said Patriot coach Tom Goehle. "It's hard to tell how they will respond, but enough of them did respond for us to do well."
The varsity boys scored 79 points to best second-place Luverne, which had 100 counters.
Worthington (114), Mountain Lake-Butterfield-Odin (122), Adrian (130) and Murray County Central (130) round out the field.
Brad Haak, who hauled in two touchdown passes and recorded a safety on defense during Friday's football game, had his run of good luck continue Saturday. Haak won the varsity individual title with a time of 17:04.
Tyler Bush (eighth in 18:09), Lee Jackson (16th in 18:50), Kale Wiertzema (25th in 19:34) and Nathan Fick (29th in 19:47) made contributions to H-BC-E's winning team effort.
Matt Buck placed 33rd in 19:59 without influencing the scoring.
H-BC-E's junior high boys tallied 36 points to win their team championship.
Top 10 efforts from Nathan Mahone (first in 6:29), Devin DeBoer (fifth in 6:37), Kerry Fink (sixth in 6:44) and John Sandbulte (seventh in 6:45) set the stage for a victory as a team.
Adam Finke placed 12th in 7:12 to help the team cause, while Justin Hinks didnÕt influence the scoring after placing 21st in 9:40.
Lee Walraven led a Patriot boys' junior varsity team that was one runner short of being complete by finishing third with a time of 12:18 in a two-mile race.
Derek Haak (25th in 13:56), Paul Jess (29th in 14:07) and Jared Drenth (39th in 14:30) also ran with Walraven.
Patriots Cassi Tilstra and Brittney Rozeboom secured the top two places in the girls' junior varsity race with respective 13:56 and 14:13 times. Becky Broesder placed 17th in 15:30 during the same race.
Stacy Bush was the lone Patriot entered in the girls' junior varsity run. She finished 20th in 8:25.
"Everybody had a good day for us, boys and girls," Goehle said. "It was a big meet, and I was proud of the way our kids ran."
H-BC-E has a busy week on hand as it runs in Jackson today, in Princeton Saturday and in Slayton Tuesday.