The Pulaski County High School Cross Country team traveled to Mechanicsville Saturday to compete in the Mikestat.com Invitational at Pole Green Park. By the end of the day, another new record had been set.
Sophomore Cole Boone once again broke the PCHS 5K record, which he broke previously at the last meet, with a time of 15.58. That broke his previous record by more than 17 seconds.
“There is still a lot of improvement coming from Cole Boone,” Coach Hannah Alexander said. “He may have broken the record again today, but the sky is still the limit for him.”
Boone broke the record running in the Boys Elite race, consisting of the top runners in the Commonwealth and beyond. While his time was impressive, that time landed him in 52nd place overall in the run. Senior Drew Griffith of Butler High School took the top spot with his time of 14:21. Second place was senior Berkley Nance of Mills Godwin High School at 14:43.
Cougar senior Garrett Kinder also turned in a solid performance, finishing in 72nd place overall in the Boys Elite race with his time of 16:10. This was his new personal record.
There were 350 total runners in this race.
Another Cougar ran in the Boys Emerging Elite race. Sophomore Tanner Linkous finished 231st out of 412 runners with his time of 18:37. The top time in this race came from junior Connor Linehan of Grafton High School at 15:45.
Freshman Chloe Duncan took on the Small School Girls Race, finishing 152nd out of 169 runners with her time of 28:58.
The remaining members of the team ran in the Small Schools Boys race. This included Carter Simmers (19:39) Landon Clark (19:53) Zaiden Morris (20:05) Jonah Morgan (19:53) Josh Secrist (20:33) Gaige Barton (21:26) Milan Patel (21:34) and Andrew Allen (22:41). The team finished 22nd out of 31 schools overall.
“It was a rough and rainy day and a six-hour bus ride for most of the team, so seeing some positive results was a good thing,” Coach Alexander said. “Going to meets with runners of this caliber can only make us all better. We’ll continue to prepare for the State Meet in November and hope to see even more records fall.”