Columbus North’s Lana Wisler, left, Kyleigh Wolf and Macy Eaton, right, run against Columbus East at Ceraland, Tuesday, Aug. 22, 2023.
Paige Grider | For The Republic
The Columbus North-Columbus East dual meet usually is the first 5,000-meter (3.1-mile) race of the season for the Bull Dogs, and the past two years, they’ve had large packs of runners at the front finishing together.
Tuesday evening, they took a little different approach. North’s boys and girls — both of which are ranked No. 19 — ran mostly their own races in scoring 15-50 victories.
“The goal for the guys was just to beat as many East people as possible, get as many people in front of the No. 1 East guy,” said junior Neal White, who won the boys race in 17 minutes, 8.29 seconds. “It was supposed to be more of a tempo workout where it’s not really all out, but it is going to be varying paces for different groups.”
The Bull Dogs had the top 26 runners in the boys race and the top 16 in the girls race. Following White across the line in the boys race were Jace Works (17:24.17), Adam Reckers (17:30.26), Draven Martinez (17:30.95), Jonny Klaus (17:34.41), Akot Tong (17:35.71) and Denton Sluder (17:52.64).
“Overall, I think we ran well,” White said. “It’s a good start to the season. For a lot of freshmen, this is their first real 5K. It’s a good start to Rival Week.”
“Our boys were kind of pushing it the second half,” North coach Rick Sluder added. “With the temperature, we were kind of cautious in the first mile, just to make sure everybody was good, and then we kind of went for it.”
Jackson Brookes led the Olympians with a 27th-place finish in 20:03.60. Austin Menefee took 35th in 21:30.71, while Lorren Westerfeld was 36th (21:34.38), Chris Gilroy 38th (22:37.98) and Chance Knapp (23:58.52).
“The conditions were definitely difficult today, so I was mostly focused on the safety of my runners,” East boys coach Ryan Burke said. “I’m happy with they way they finished. They were still able to get in a good effort and stay safe.”
In the girls race, three Bull Dogs crossed the finish line almost simultaneously. Kyleigh Wolf was clocked in 21:33.80, Macy Eaton 21:33.86 and Lana Wisler 21:33.96.
“We all pushed ourselves together, and that’s what matters,” Wisler said. “We were definitely pushing ourselves, but we wanted to finish as a team. That’s what our goal was.”
Maggie Russell finished fourth in 21:58.97. Ainsley Sherlock took fifth in 22:01.19, while Katie Frazier was sixth (22:04.29) and Lydia Weed seventh (22:05.16).
“Our girls ran hard. They just happened to be pretty close together,” Rick Sluder said. “Their times last week were separated by just a couple of seconds over at Brown County. They’re just really close together in that pack.”
Amelia Fay led the Olympians with a 17th-place finish in 23:52.70. Abby Collins took second in 26:00.23, while Victoria Cuhadar was 28th (30:08.09) and Megumi Going and Carly Otte 29th and 30th (both 30:08.20).
Tuesday’s meet was pushed back an hour because of the heat. Temperatures still were close to 90 degrees when the boys race started at 6:30 p.m. and in the high 80s when the girls went off a few minutes after 7 p.m.
“Knowing that this heat was coming for a week, it’s easy to get in their heads, and they didn’t,” Sluder said. “The boys and girls handled it really well. Neal looked good, and then obviously our top three there ran really well pushing each other together. So we were really happy with our performances tonight. We have a lot of freshmen on both sides, so those freshmen getting their first 5K in was really important.”
