ALBANY — The host Comets won the team title at the WIAA Division 3 subsectional at Baertschi Farms north of Albany Oct. 20.

Albany won the nine-team girls race by just a single point, 38-39, over Dodgeland. Parkview (74) was third, followed by St. Ambrose (112), Rio-Fall River (130). In the boys’ seven-team race, Albany’s 45 points outpaced Horicon (57), Parkview (83) and Rio-Fall River (111).

“We knew we had a shot to go on, but we weren’t going to leave anything to chance,” Albany head coach Tony Brewer said of both his boys and girls teams. 

The meet was split into four races, two in the early afternoon, and then two more hours later as the temperatures began to drop and the mist began to fall. Albany ran in the cooler, wetter round of racing.

On the girls side, Albany freshman Ava Ahnen returned from a leg injury to finish second in her heat — and second overall — with a time of 20:57.53, about 61 seconds behind champion Ava Raasch of Dodgeland.

“I felt pretty good coming off the injury and not running the last race. I feel like I performed really well,” Ahnen said.

A young runner taking in her first year of varsity, having to recover so quickly from an injury challenged Ahnen differently than any other time in her time running in middle school.

“I’m looking at racing differently. After being injured, I’m really not trying to take anything for granted and really focusing on the race and focusing on my competition and doing the best that I can,” she said.

Albany teammate McKenna Broughton (21:01.08) was the second Comet to cross the finish line, finishing third overall. After a slight gap, the Comets had four runners finish 9-12 in their race and 10-13 overall. That pack of running kept Dodgeland from winning the team title.

Emileigh Dallman (23:07.06), Avary Briggs (23:07.28), Kaiya Zurfluh (23:08.21) and Linsey Mueller (23:12.74) all finished in a bunch. The other Comet racer, Payton Wachholz, did not finish the race due to an injury.

“Payton is normally our three, and when you lose that, you’ve got to have girls step up, and they did a good job,” Brewer said. “To watch those four come in … to see what they did is exciting.”

In the boys race, Albany’s Gage Roth (18:26.06) and Jesse Schwartz (18:31.02) finished back-to-back at third and fourth in their heat, and seventh and eighth overall. 

“I don’t think it went great, but it was good,” Schwartz said of his run.

The two battle in practice every day, and have let that competition spill over into race days.

Owen Baertschi (19:38.62) was eighth in his heat and 14th overall, scoring a major run for the Comets. Teammates Brayden Bakken (20:19.49), Drew Sertle (20:25.10) and Brian Cid (20:27.90) finished 19th, 20th and 22nd overall to cap the team’s scoring. 

“We preach that, as far as our gaps between our two and three (runners). We know that’s our gap. Owen has now stepped up, and after that Brayden and Drew and Brian, and then even Andy is closing in that gap at seven,” Brewer said. “We keep telling him — I don’t know how many five-runners he’s beat, but he’s got to realize that’s important. It was a great team race, and like I said, we’re not going to leave anything to chance.”

Next up for the Comets is the Oct. 24 sectional at The Prairie School in Racine. Brewer said the girls have a goal of reaching the state meet as a team, and with a healthy run it could be possible.

“We’re going to go out and race hard and see what happens for this group of boys and girls,” Brewer said. “I think we left a little bit out there, which we wanted to do. We were hoping we could do that and so I think now they’re hopefully excited; it’s motivation and we can try to finish in the top two somehow, someway. We’ve got until Saturday to get healthy and mentally ready and see what we can do.”

WIAA Division 3 Boscobel Subsectional

BOSCOBEL — Darlington and Pecatonica-Argyle raced at the Boscobel subsectional Oct. 19. The Darlington boys team advanced to the sectional with a second place finish, while the girls took third, with Raquel Reuter and Judith Meister moving on.

In the boys race, with the temperatures hovering around freezing and light snow falling, junior Rhett Reuter finished third overall with a time of 16:33.50. Iowa-Grant’s Nick Connolly (16:15.27) was the winner, with Shullsburg’s Nike Karavergos (16:27.39) taking second.

George West (16:57.51) of Darlington also broke the 17-minute mark, one of five racers to do so on the day. Caleb Weaver (17:48.73), Christian Gutierrez (18:00.28) and Ethan Thompson (18:34.05) all scored for the Redbirds.

Darlington scored 63 team points, five behind meet champion Boscobel (58), and 13 ahead of Iowa-Grant (76). 

Pecatonica-Argyle senior David Tisch finished 14th overall (17:49.50), while sophomore teammate Ridge Toay (18:34.51) was 34th. Also running for the Vikings were Brady Penniston (48th, 19:52.24) and Nathan Nickels (59th, 21:18.27).

In the girls race, Reuter (19:39.18) was seventh overall, with Meister (19:39.18) eighth. Allyson Meyers (20:35.47) finished 13th, Ashlynn Norgard (20:37.88) was 15th and Morgan Black (20:58.49) was 20th overall.

Running for Pec-Argyle was Allie Godfrey (54th, 25:50.78), Emily Zimmerman (55th, 25:50.78) and Sydney Webster (60th, 28:15.95).

Lancaster (46) won the team title, followed by Fennimore (60), which narrowly edged out Darlington (63). Boscobel (76) was fourth.

Darlington is scheduled to host the sectional Oct. 23.