MUSKEGON – It was a chilly morning at Oak Ridge Golf Club, but the Whitehall boys and Mona Shores girls were on fire both winning a GMAA title.
BOYS – The Whitehall boys narrowly defeated Fruitport (63-64) to earn the GMAA boys cross country title. The Vikings were paced by Carter McIlroy (16:56.18) who ran his best race of the season, and lead a strong Viking team who placed three runners in the top 10 (5th-Andre Richmond-17:05.02, 7th-Riley Buys-17:17.07).
Klay Grant (15:54.7 – Reeths Puffer) was the top medalist for the boys, and the only runner to break the 16 minute mark. Grant, a standout senior runner for the Rockets is ranked 25th in the state and has been on point heading into the MHSAA postseason, breaking 16 minutes in his each of his last two races.
GIRLS – In the girls race, it was the Mona Shores Sailors taking the title led by Robyn Hunt (3rd-20:33.40). In a strong team showing, the Sailors captured 4 of the top 15 spots (8th-Destiny Douglas-20:57.08, 9th-Cecilia Conrad-21:04.96, 12th-Cienna Billingsley-21:27.08) enroute to the title.
Abby Vanderkooi (18:35.6) is learning to take it easy after suffering through a hip overuse injury over the summer. Unfortunately for the competition Vanderkooi’s easy is quite fast, and good enough today to run away with the GMAA girls title. The Western Michigan Christian standout outpaced the second place finisher, North Muskegon’s Gabriella Wingard (20:15.75) by more than a minute and a half to earn another GMAA title.
NOTABLE – The NBC (Montague) Middle School boys team had something to cheer about this morning after claiming the top two places in the boys meet. Noah Raeth (11:55.24) was the GMAA Champion and Liam Leek (12:34.9) was second for the Wildcats. Rex Pumford (13:22.77) finished 15th to round out a strong showing by the Wildcat runners and push them to a third place team finish behind Whitehall and Mona Shores.
