Seconds Produces a First

Half-mile into the boys junior varsity race and the look on Dane Duerst's face tells us everything we need to know about today. It will be tough. He's in second place, a Boscobel boy leads and three run in Dane's shadow. Our large JV team races ahead of most of the eighteen teams but not fast enough to give Dane any relief. Three miles later we see three Boscobels finishing first, second and third, Dane (20:19) holding fourth and our Ben Lukszys, Simon Blohowiak, Beckett Malaise, Braylon Hoesly, Logan Blum and Griffin Ness all finishing before their fifth man. Boscobel wins 27 to our 40 points.
The varsity race is unusual today. Varsity athletes participate in seven small races. Heat one includes only the seventh runner for each team. Already a Boscobel (19:12) runner leads the pack of eighteen guys with NGM's Garrett Grossen (19:28) in third. Despite Garrett's viscous sprint, we've lost 16 seconds to our competition.
Heat Two for sixth runners: Ty Ready (19:06) just trails Boscobel (18:44). Ty holds off 16 others but can't close the 22-second lead.
Deja Vu for Heat Three: Boscobel in first (18:29) and Conor McCoy (18:40) in second.
Heat Four starts and, for the first time this morning, we're in first. Evan Guenther (18:24) runs just ahead of Boscobel's Parker. We get the feeling that Evan's toying with this guy. Evan repeatedly accelerates, Parker responds but the gap always enlarges. As Evan sprints up the finishing hill, he's gained 11 seconds for our New Glarus-Monticello team.
Next race: Rudy Wicker (18:23) and Boscobel (18:29) travel stride-for-stride for 4,800 of the 5,000 meter race - then Rudy explodes up the hill taking him to the white line. A 6-second margin for us is the result.
Two races to go. We're down in seconds, but gaining. Joe Quaglia (17:38) takes off early and never looks back. Good thing because there's nothing to see. He's out of sight as the Boscobel athlete (18:32) is almost a minute away. Joe just evened the score.
Final race of the day: Each team places their fastest runner in this heat. Jarrett from Cashton wins with a 17:05. Our Adam Nelson (17:56) places 6th just behind B'bel's Ben (17:48).
Noon comes and we gather on this sunny Saturday to hear the results. At this moment we don't know the finish times of our competition so we can only guess at the outcome. The computer takes the fastest five times for each team and that total determines their score. We've only won three of the seven races but that doesn't count; total time of top five counts.
During this clear, cool, calm day the New Glarus-Monticello girls participated in the same Relay Format. Annie Fuller just broke 24 minutes with a 23:59.7, and finished as our fastest gal. Molly Molencamp (25:14), Alexa Thayer (27:49), Emily Streiff (28:51) and Dylan Noll (29:25) ended up twelfth of eighteen schools.
We listen to the final boys results: Boscobel takes Small School Division, we capture Large School. Checking times we're delighted to find that NGM is fastest overall. Strangely, our winning total of 90 minutes 59.1 seconds is exactly what we'll spend on the bus going home.