WAMEGO On Saturday, the top runners from around the state in class 1, 2 and 4A convened at the Wamego Country Club golf course to compete in the State Cross Country Championship meet.
Racing conditions were ideal with fair temperatures and minimal wind. Area athletes hailed from Iola, Humboldt and Yates Center.
Headlining the day and racing in the final high school meEet of his career was Yates Center senior Hadley Splechter. Last year, Splechter celebrated both his individual meet championship along with Yates Centers first team cross country championship in school history.
Saturday, the bolt in blue was the lone qualifier for the Wildcats but he still had plenty of domination to unleash on Class 2A before the day was done.
Splechters first-place finish came with a time of 15:57.5 which was 31.7 faster than second place Meade senior Ethan Thompson and a full minute and 17 seconds ahead of the rest of the field.
Splechter ran the fastest time of all runners in Wamego Saturday and most likely wouldve outpaced the runners (class 3, 5 and 6A) in the other state meet at Lawrence-Rim Rock.
Splechter ran a 15:18 at Rim Rock earlier in the year. Saturdays best time there came from St. Thomas Aquinas Ethan Marshall who ran the course in 15:33.9.
The race ends a stunning high school cross country career and leads to the impending choice on where hell be running at the next level. Kansas, K-State and Wichita State are all expected to be in contention for the senior.
Iola
The Mustangs went in knowing that in some ways, they were playing with house money.
After winning their first regional since 1994 the weekend before, the Iola boys headed into the state meet without senior and number two runner Cole Regehr who is currently on a Kansas Department of Agriculture trip to Taiwan. Without Regehr, the expectation of a possible podium finish was set aside and the Mustangs just focused on enjoying the race.
At the end of it all, the Mustangs still came off looking pretty decent, finishing seventh overall out of 12 teams.
The seventh-place effort was led by the Iola boys only medalist Jack Adams.
Adams was projected to finish 12th-25th based on his times throughout the season but the sophomore was having none of that as he used a late push to move his way up to an eighth-place finish with a time of 17:22.
Head coach Marv Smith surmised that the time was the second fastest 5K time for Iola in school history, just 20 seconds behind Keil Regehrs time of 17:02 as a senior.
