Riverdale’s TRAC title is 3 years in the making

WALNUT – Kevin Claus can’t help smile when he talks about his Riverdale cross country team. After all, it is his baby.

Claus, who used to run for Riverdale, has watched his program grow from having no full team for 12 years, grow into a conference champion in it’s third year back in existence, winning Tuesday’s Three Rivers Conference boys.

The Rams ran away with the TRAC title with the first three finishers, led by race winner Tommy Murray (16:10), and five out of the top seven finishes to easily outdistance runner-up Newman, 19-62.

“This is three years in the making. We’ve had the same group for three years. We’ve got a really tight bond amongst everybody on the team and we’ve kind of been on this mission together. It’s been awesome to be a part of it,” Claus said.

Riverdale did not field a full boys team from 2007-18. The program has grown from six boys in 2019 to 15, plus two girls.

“This has been a really fun project. Everybody has been invested right from the start. There were really only one or two runners that knew what cross country was,” Claus said.

Claus, a 2013 grad, was one of those kids who didn’t know anything about cross country. He was talked into running by his best friend, Mitch Sand, and went on to run cross country and track for four years and later at Augustana College.

“He asked me first day of school if I wanted to run cross country and I didn’t have any idea what that was. And it’s been a huge part of my life ever since,” Claus said.

Sand’s younger brother now runs for Claus’ Riverdale team.

This was the Rams’ first trip to the Walnut course in eight years and Claus wasn’t sure how his runners would react to the new course, but he had no worries.

Juniors Landis Musser (16:43) and Peyton Sand (17:05) followed their classmate Murray across the finish in second and third while teammates Cameron Overton was sixth (17:33) and Caden Ludin was seventh (17:36).

Newman sophomore Lucas Schaab led Sauk Valley runners, placing fourth (17:27). Teammates Tom Powers was 11th (17:54) and Lucas Simpson was 14th (18:00.

For third-place Erie-Prophetstown (105), Jacob Gleason was 12th (17:55), Lucas Dreisbach 15th (18:01), Victor Bonnel 24th (18:55) and Aiden Jepson 26th (19:12).

Bureau Valley junior Elijah House led Bureau County runners, finishing eighth (17:37), while Mendota freshman Anthony Kelson placed ninth in 17:43.

Miguel Jones led St. Bede with an 18th-place finish (18:28), while Princeton’s Christian Yepsen placed 22nd (18:54) and BV’s Ben Roth was 25th (19:00).

The Storm finished seventh (177) and Princeton was 10th (209) among 11 full squads.

Sherrard girls win

Sherrard won the girls meet with 43 points, beating out E-P (53) and Princeton (73) in the six-team field.

Orion sophomore Olivia Thomsen (19:45) finished more than a minute and a half ahead of runner-up Natalie Martin (21:24) of Kewanee and third-place finisher Lexi Bohms (21:35) of Princeton.

Dylan Chandler was fifth (21:56) was ninth and Jillian Norman 10th (22:47) for E-P.

Princeton’s Hannah Muehlschlegel was 11th (22:55) and Kiana Brokaw was 16th (23:20)

For St. Bede, Jaelyn Weber finished 14th (23:05) and Madelyn Torrance was 18th (23:43).

Mendota’s Aliza Salinas-Cervantes was 25th in 24:41.