With the temperature in the 80s the cross country teams hosted 21 schools at Clawson City Park for their annual Popsicle Invite.  

Sophomore Ray Lanfear led the boys team with a 20:41 in his high school cross country debut.  Cole Wyckoff ran a personal record of 22:51 for the 5k distance and was more than 7 minutes faster than his time last year at City Park.  Fellow sophomore Caden Jones dropped more than 5 minutes off of his previous mark for the Clawson course.  Seniors Gabe Stevens and Luke Wilder provided their usual solid performances as the team finished 5 runners in the varsity race.  Xander Frink and Scott Roberts ran the 2-mile race for their first ever cross country meet.

In the girls race, Lovelyn Ketepa set the standard for the Trojans,  Her hard work in the past year allowed her to drop her time on the Clawson course by more than 9 minutes.  Lovelyn is the only returning runner on this Clawson team.  Calleigh McMIllan, Elizabeth Schneider, Lucy Thomson, and Charly Werenka all ran good races to start their high school careers.

In the middle school races Elaina McDonald ran a blazing hot 6:55 to win the mile while Taliana Merrit and Aniyah Keith used personal record races to finish in 5th and 6th place overall.  Lucy Werner logged many miles this summer and was rewarded with a mile time that was 1:20 faster than her previous best.  Mallory Coatta rejoined the distance squad after a successful season running sprints with the track team.   
Matthew McClain, Jamison Crottie, and Charles Koehler all opted to race the 2-mile.  This is Matthew's last year of middle school, but his first year of cross country.  His 13:38 was good enough for a 3rd place finish and portends a good season ahead.  
10 middle school boys (Zackary Campbell, Gideon Schneider, Frank Savel. Connor Jones, Finn Mumma, Harrison LeRoy, Owen VanNostrand, Nathan Shepard, Emmet Hanser-Maynard, and Gavin Palmer) made their cross country debut with the  1 mile race.  Zack Campbell was the top finisher with a time of 7:49.

The runners will find their next race on September 10th as they journey to Algonac for the Muskrat Invitational.