Goentzel claims top-10 finish at Hesston years ago
Sports reporter
For the second week in a row Marion High School cross country runner Daniel Goentzel was rewarded for his hard off-season training, finished ninth Thursday at the Hesston meet.
The race was broken down into six different categories. The boys were featured in four races, once for each class, while girls raced in two groups, freshman-sophomore and junior-senior.
Goentzel finished the 3.1 miles in 18 minutes, 12 seconds to claim his first-ever top-10 varsity race.
"He's just gotten a lot better," head coach Rex Ostmeyer said.
It wasn't like the junior was terrible last year. He finished second on the MHS squad each week, even claiming a 15th-place medal at the Marion meet last year.
"He's our most improved runner," Ostmeyer said.
Just like the week before at Abilene, junior Luke Bowers and sophomore Justin Heidebrecht finished second and third respectively behind Goentzel.
Bowers brought home a 12th-place medal with a time of 18:41, and Heidebrecht finished 13th in the sophomore boys' race, finishing at 19:33.
Rounding out the rest of the boys' team were
Ben Leppke (21:17), Matt Kirkpatrick (21:30), Bryce Nelson (26:04), and Kerim Geldimuradov (26:39)
Ostmeyer thought Nelson and Geldimuradov did well for their first ever race, finished ahead of about one-third of the group.
Junior Danielle Cope once again led the girls' squad, finishing 16th in the junior-senior race with a two-mile time of 13:55.
Cope has now finished first for MHS the past nine regular season races.
Lone girls' sophomore runner Tacy Taylor finished with a second-best team-time of 14:58.
Junior Katie Hett was just one second behind her in the junior-senior race with a time of 14:59.
Elisa Gayle and Emily Svoboda also were one second apart with Svoboda at 18:18 and Gayle at 18:19.
Ostmeyer was pleased with the high finishes, but noticed his team's times were about the same as last year.
"Overall our times were slow," he said. "I think the course changed a little bit. The wind and there being so many runners were issues."
Even talking with other coaches they thought everyone's times were slow, but the bottom line is how you finish compared to the group.
"We're still seeing the improvement," he said.
MHS will be run at 4 p.m. Thursday in Peabody.
