RICHMOND — Iola High will send Keegan Hill and Cole Moyer to the Class 3A State Cross Country meet, courtesy of their personal-best showings at Saturday’s regionals, hosted by Central Heights.
Hill overcame a sudden bout of nausea near the end of his 5K run to take fifth place with a personal-best time of 17 minutes, 14.2 seconds. Moyer wasn’t far behind, finishing with a time of 17:41.20 to finish in 12th.
The top 15 individual runners move on to the state meet, set for Saturday at Rim Rock Farms on the outskirts of Lawrence.
The Mustang boys narrowly missed out on qualifying as a team, finishing fourth with a score of 117. The top three teams — Jayhawk-Linn (61 points), Girard (67) and Caney Valley (83) advance to state.
Hill and Moyer are only part of Iola’s stellar day.
Nine of the 10 Mustang runners who took part set personal-best times, and the 10th, Lynsie Fehr, had her best time of the season in the girls race.
“I knew all of them were capable of the PRs.,” Iola head coach Brittany Daugharthy said. “All season we have been talking about peaking at the right time, that all the work they were putting in was all for them to sparkle and shine at the end of the season.
“It’s so fun to watch them run their best after watching them through all the highs and lows of the season. I can’t brag enough about how hard they worked this season, and today it paid off.”
Moyer and Hill agreed.
“I hadn’t PR’d since regionals my freshman year,” Moyer said, “so it had been a while.”
In fact, Moyer’s goal for this season wasn’t necessarily to qualify for state, but to set a new personal record.
“Getting to state was definitely the icing on top,” Moyer joked. “Or maybe it’s the cherry.”
Hill, ever the perfectionist, was “pretty happy” with setting a new personal record, “but I was hoping to get a little lower,” he said.
Blame the nausea — Hill guessed it may have been attributable to the candy he ate on the bus ride to Richmond.
The state race at Rim Rock offers a challenging series of hills and valleys. Both runners fared well earlier this year on the famed course.
