The Lansing cross country teams kept up their momentum this fall with more wins and more 1st place awards in the second week of season.

On a balmy Saturday Sept. 16 that felt more like August, the Lansing varsity teams traveled up to Wayne High School near Rochester for a mega meet—the Wayne Pre-State Invitational involving 20 schools and more than 140 runners in each race at Lansing's division. Despite the crowded field, both the Bobcat boys and girls teams turned in impressive showings. On the boys' side, Zoli Csaki (19:15.10), Jack Thomas (19:32.58), Liam Hulsebosch (19:35.61), Torsten Gartenberg (20:09.99), and Teddy Brenner (22:39.55) comprised the Bobcats' top 5 scorers, with Anders Axelson and Ben Caveney also finishing the race. As a team, the Lansing boys finished 15th of 20 teams, with Watkins Glen (the top-ranked XC team at Class C in New York) taking 1st place. On the girls' side, Mikaela Garcia (21:32.97) tallied a very impressive 18th place out of 144 runners, with Leigh Miller (23:21.31), Allison Keefe (24:05.34), Teresa Garcia (24:08.79), and Hana Thibault (26:49.36) also scoring for their team to put the Lady Bobcats at 7th out of 19 teams competing.

"This was a great opportunity to view the course on which the NYSPHSAA Championships will be run, as well as see competition that came from all over the state," said Lansing XC head coach Becca Lovenheim. "Our varsity teams performed well, executing our race plans and staying focused despite the warm weather."

On the following Tuesday Sept. 20, Lansing XC headed across Cayuga Lake for a multi-team meet at Trumansburg, with runners from Groton, Marathon, and Elmira Notre Dame also coming to compete on the short course (varsity running 4K races instead of 5K, and modified running 2K). For the varsity girls, this time Lansing's Mikaela Garcia (16:42.8) finished 1st out of 39 runners, with Leigh Miller (17:57.5) finishing 6th, Allison Keefe (18:40.9) 8th, Teresa Garcia (19:50.4) 19th, and Hana Thibault (20:44.7) 24th for a Lady Bobcats team that finished 2nd overall to host Trumansburg. Haley Sullivan also finished the race for the varsity girls. For the modified girls, Lansing's Kinsley Jacobs also put up a first place finish for the Lady Bobcats, with Loveta Geesey also finishing the race.

For the varsity boys, Bobcats dominated the top 10 spots with Zoli Csaki (14:16.2), Liam Hulsebosch (14:45.9), Jack Thomas (15:02.8), and Torsten Gartenberg (15:08.8) finishing 5-7-8-9 respectively. Teddy Brenner (16:13.0) finished 12th, 15 seconds ahead of Trumansburg's fourth-best runner to give the Bobcats the team win over the Raiders in point scoring (Lansing 25, Trumansburg 38, Groton 51). Anders Axelson, Ben Caveney, and Dowain Geesey also finished the race for the Bobcat boys.

At the Wayne Pre-State Invitational just a few days earlier, Tburg had finished higher than Lansing in the varsity boys team competition, so Coach Lovenheim was happy to get the win. She was also extremely pleased with her modified boys' team's performance, where Lansing's Sam Bell netted a first place finish, Charlie Miller finished 3rd, Caden Michalec 6th, Parker Vooris 7th, and Tom Stallone 9th. Lansing's Seth Riley also finished 10th to push Trumansburg's 5th finisher farther down in the scoring and give the Bobcats a 26-30 win against Tburg. Zachary Hwang, Jack Negley, Arjun Kodali, and Brandon Brotherton also finished the race for Lansing.

"We didn't have complete scoring boys teams in some previous years, and yesterday both modified and varsity boys came away with overall wins," she said. "We also had some strong performances on the girls team, including Mikaela Garcia and Kinsley Jacobs winning each of their races by significant margins.

"It's great to see our runners' hard work paying off."

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