Powered by three runners in the top five, University Heights Academy claimed its first Class 1-A, Region 1 Cross Country championship Saturday at Logan County High School.
Graham Conrad, Ronan Croney-Sallie, and Jude Finch all earned top-five finishes to lead the Blazers, who set school records for lowest meet score (50) and placed five runners in the top 25.
Conrad led UHA by finished second place in a time of 17:45. Croney-Sallie had a personal-record time of 18:19 to finish fourth and Jude Finch was fifth in 18:27.
Senior Zech Davis finished 19th with a season-best time of 20:13 and Scar Venable rounded out the Blazers’ scoring with a time of 20:13, just a few hundredths of a second behind Davis.
Freshman Garrett Boling finished 29th in a time of 20:45 and Hayden Hayes finished 35th and also set a personal record with a time of 21:29.
The Blazers finished with 50 points, three ahead of Fort Campbell, who was the favorite to win the meet. Dawson Springs, who had won the last six regional meets, took third place.
The Blazers will run Saturday at the KHSAA Class 1-A State Cross Country Meet at the Kentucky Horse Park in Lexington at 2 p.m.
Meanwhile, in the girls’ Class 1-A, Region 1 race, eighth-grader Molly Cavinder narrowly missed qualifying for the state meet as she took 27th in a time of 29:01.
Cavinder’s time was 3:12 faster than when she ran at Logan County on Sept. 25.
Photo provided