The Ballard women's cross country team put together a strong performance Tuesday night at the Winterset Invitational, finishing just four points shy of the team title.  In a loaded field featuring multiple ranked squads, the Bombers placed second overall with 57 points, trailing only Class 3A No. 5 Winterset (53 points).

Ballard, ranked No. 12 in Class 3A, showed its depth with six runners finishing in the top 25.  Freshman Avilee Miller led the way, placing fifth in 20:19.97.  Close behind were Honor Jorgensen (10th, 20:55.59), Brooklyn Shoen (11th, 21:05.70), and Raya Miller (13th, 21:17.50), giving Ballard four scorers inside the top 15.  Kaitlyn Dunn rounded out the team's scoring with an 18th-place finish in 22:07.79.

Adding to the Bombers' depth, Nora Showman (23rd, 23:05.29) and Grace Grundmeyer (25th, 23:17.07) both ran strong races and provided a critical boost to the team score by finishing ahead of Winterset's No. 5 runner.

Head Coach Scott Barth praised his team's effort on the challenging Winterset course:

"The girls ran a very solid race on the hills of Winterset and held their own against a very good and #5 ranked Winterset team.  We did a great job of progressing our paces through the race.  We were once again led by the top four of Avilee, Honor, Brooklyn, and Raya, which kept us close to Winterset.  Kaitlyn, in her first varsity race and only her second 5K ever, had a surging final mile to close out our scoring.  Nora and Grace ran really well too, and actually helped in our team score by placing in front of Winterset's fifth runner.  I feel really good from what I saw today—we went toe to toe with the #5 team in our class and beat the #2 team in Class 2A and the #1 team in Class 1A solidly."

Barth added that the team's youth is an exciting storyline this season:

"We are a young team without any seniors in the varsity lineup and being led by freshmen in four of our five scoring positions.  We got better from meet one to meet two and I'm seeing a lot of good things from our team.  The emergence of our freshmen is encouraging, and we also had a great JV performance with freshman Alea Kinzenbaw winning her first 5K ever.  There are others waiting for their shot to run varsity as well, which gives us great depth moving forward."

The Bombers return to action next week when they host the Mike Carr Invitational on Monday, September 15 at 4:30 PM.