Cross country a shining light for Bucyrus' fall sports
It hasn't been the most successful fall season for the Bucyrus Redmen athletic teams.
The boys golf team finished 3-5 in the Northern 10 conference and capped off the season with a last place finish in the N10 tournament and an eighth place finish out of 12 in the Division III sectional. The Redmen were towards the bottom of the pack in almost every tournament this season, but showed promise a few times throughout the season. The girls didn't fare much better finishing fourth out of five at the N10 tournament and 16th out of 17 at the Division II sectional.
In football, the Redmen are winless on the season despite boasting a quarterback, wide receiver and linebacker ranked in the top-two statistically in their positions in the conference. While they will likely earn their first win this Friday against Ridgedale, it's been a rough season for the Redmen and the summation of it came when Bucyrus blew a 19-point lead to Buckeye Central and went on to lose 41-40.
Volleyball saw a slightly better season than the other two sports. After the Lady Redmen dropped their first 10 matches of the season, they bounced back and went on to close out the season 7-5 and finish seventh in the N10 with a 5-11 conference record. Their season ended with a 3-0 loss to Galion in the Division III sectional semifinal, but the team showed a lot of improvement over the final 12 games.
On the opposite spectrum of success, are the boys and girls the cross country teams. Bucyrus had a bit of an up-and-down season finishing towards the top of meets on multiple occasions, but also having its fair share of bottom level finishes. Nonetheless, the Redmen and Lady Redmen kept working hard every week of the season and seem to be peaking at just the right time.
Starting with the Marion Harding Invitational on Oct. 8, Bucyrus saw success, despite not finishing high in the meet as a team. The team had 12 personal bests by runners at Marion Harding, but what was most impressive, was doing so with several Division II schools running alongside them. Coach Carl Rittenour said after the meet he hoped the positive individual results would carry over the following week into the conference meet.
At the N10 championship, the boys finished fourth and the girls finished fifth. Rittenour said he expected that sort of result from the boys, but was pleasantly surprised at the way the girls finished after the championship was over a couple weeks ago. He said the team was "running pretty consistently" and the goal entering the district meet was to at least "get as many (individuals) as we can moving on."
Colonel Crawford advances to regional in cross country
When all was said and done at Amman's Park last weekend, his boys finished sixth and girls were fifth, both just missing out on the top-four and advancing to the regional meet in Tiffin this weekend. But, he will be sending a trio of runners to compete, thus achieving his goal.
Carson Pirnstill finished fourth in the boys race while Julia VanVoorhis and Mirium Everett finished 10th and 14th in the girls, securing a spot as individual runners in the regional meet at Hedges-Boyer Park on Saturday.
Amid a pool of unfavorable results for the Redmen in golf, football and volleyball, the cross country team stands out and will look to continue the trend of winning as Pirnstill, VanVoorhis and Everett aim for a spot in the state meet at National Trail Raceway in Hebron on Nov. 5. With the bar set high by the final team competing for the Redmen in the fall sports season, maybe it'll spark the winter teams to start strong and avoid poor starts to their seasons.