Lake City cross-country teams take fourth at Austin

The Lake City boys and girls cross-country teams each placed fourth Tuesday at the Austin Invitational at River Oaks Golf Course.

Tigers junior Carston Dammann led the boys with a second-place finish in the 5-kilometer race with a time of 17 minutes, 4 seconds.

Senior Chris Breuer finished 17th for Lake City, which scored 97 points. Albert Lea won the boys meet, Winona took second and Austin placed third.

Freshman Sergey Duchelle took 24th place in 19:01, freshman Colin Fritz ran a personal best time of 19:17 to finish 25th and freshman Calvin Lehman, who also set a personal best, finished 31st in 19:35.

Three girls set personal bests for Lake City

The Lake City girls team got personal bests from freshman Lydia Taylor, freshman Becca Goertzen and junior Taylor Siewart to finish fourth with 85 points.

Austin won the meet with 44 points while Albert Lea finished second with 60 points and Winona placed third.

Taylor ran 40 seconds faster than her career record to place 11th in 16:39 on the 4-kilometer course. Alexi Befort followed with a 13th-place finish, freshman Hannah Alitz took 18th in 17:11, Goertzen took 20th in 17:23 and Siewart finished 35th in 18:02.

The strong finish should give the Tigers some confidence moving toward the conference meet Oct. 18 in La Crescent. Lake City beat conference foe Stewartville, one of the teams vying for the conference and a state trip in the section meet.

“There’s probably four or five teams running for second behind La Crescent,” Tigers head coach Howard Cook said. “Hopefully this will make them believe a little more.”

Tags: lake city, sports, prep, cross-country