BLACK RIVER FALLS — The West Salem High School cross country program left little doubt as to which is the best of the Coulee Conference on Thursday.
The Panthers swept boys and girls championships with both teams putting all of their scoring runners among the top nine in the conference meet at Skyline Golf Course.
West Salem’s boys ran to a team score of 18 as they beat second-place G-E-T and its girls to a 32 as they held off runner-up Westby.
Sophomore Evan Berra was the boys individual champion and ran a winning time of 16 minutes, 50.7 seconds for the Panthers, who had all of their scoring runners place sixth or better.
Senior Carson Gronemus was second (17:00.58), junior Andrew Lorenz fourth (17:41.8), senior Kaleb Spah fifth (17:57.2) and junior Michael Torrance sixth (18:20.5) as West Salem put plenty of space between itself and the Red Hawks (51).
Onalaska Luther was fourth 114) and Arcadia fifth (127).
Sophomore Gavin Labus led the Knights with a time of 19:08.1 that was good for 12th place. Junior Levi Braaten (17th, 19:32.4), junior Nathan Dobberstein (22nd, 19:53), junior Elijah McClellan (28th, 21:04.3) and freshman Jaime Rivera (35th, 22:23.8) also scored for Luther.
The Raiders were led by Alec Conrad, whose eighth-place time was 18:49.6. Senior Diego Cortez (21st, 19:49), junior Nathan Badillo (25th, 20:06.4), senior Bryan Simon (34th, 21:46.9) and junior Reese Kujak (39th, 22:43.2) were also scoring runners for Arcadia.
West Salem’s girls had all of their scoring runners in the top nine and beat the second-place Norsemen by eight points. Onalaska Luther was sixth (173), and Arcadia didn’t have a full team.
Freshman Nora Johnson was second overall for the Panthers with her time of 20:32.1, while her teammates ran in a cluster behind her.
Junior Sam MacRogers (sixth, 21:24.7), freshman Natalia Minard (seventh, 21:26.1), sophomore Anna Witte (eighth, 21:27.9) and junior Elise Flock (ninth, 21:32.2) all crossed the finish line less than 8 seconds apart behind Johnson.
Westby senior Elizabeth Curtis was the girls champion at 19:35.8.
The Knights were led by senior Jacee Erickson (31st, 26:11.3). She was followed by junior Elizabeth Hunter (34th, 26:54.4), junior Corrina Rouvel (35th,27:06.4), freshman Kaelyn Freelitz (36th,28:58.6) and junior Athemia Horstman (37th, 19:11).
Arcadia had three runners led by sophomore Shaylah Rodriguez (48th, 27:26). Samantha Bustos-Sandoval (55th, 30:03.8) and sophomore Shannon Cruz (58th, 31:44.7) also ran for the Raiders.
