MONROE — The Cheesemakers nearly pulled off the top team score in the boys race at the annual Bruess Invitational Aug. 27 at Twining Park. Monroe finished with 85 points — three better than state-qualifier New Glarus-Monticello. Dubuque Wahlert Catholic won the meet with 59 points.

“It was a hot and humid day, so the course was shortened for safety concerns,” Monroe coach Scott Mosher said. “The kids ran 3,600 meters instead of the 5,000.”

Senior Kyle Legler paced the Cheesemakers, finishing second overall with a time of 12 minutes, 54.6 seconds. Christian Patzka of Wisconsin Heights/Barneveld won the race in 12:45.5.

“(Kyle) worked incredibly hard over the summer and proved that he’s ready to step up and contend to be our top runner,” Mosher said. “Dylan Fahrney and Alex Henry ran together the whole race and gave us a heck of a 2-3 punch.”

Fahrney, a junior, beat sophomore teammate Henry by one-tenth of a second for 10th place (13:13.2). Jake Brower, a junior, was 30th (14:10.2) and Brennan Shelton, a senior, was 34th (14:14.0).

“The boys looked strong taking second behind a good Dubuque Wahlert team that is already farther ahead in their season since Iowa starts earlier,” Mosher said. “We had a lot of young runners get their first race out of the way who can now focus on stepping up to round out our Top 5 as we head through to the season.”

Junior Adam Nelson paced New Glarus-Monticello with a time of 13:06.9, which was good enough for fifth. Sophomore Joe Quaglia (10:30.5) was 14th, freshman Evan Guenther (13:40.1) 20th, sophomore Rudy Wicker (13:47.5) 22nd and sophomore Connor McCoy (14:04.6) was 29th.

Albany’s Josh Dahl was 21st (13:47.3) and Owen Baertschi was 77th (15:55.7).

On the girls side, Wahlert Catholic dominated the team score with 21 points, which included four of the top five runners. Albany (153) came in fifth, Monroe ninth (234) and New Glarus-Monticello 12th (269).

Monroe sophomore Jaci Hayes finished 17th (16:16.1) to lead the Cheesemakers. Senior Elise Smith (18:10.3) was 45rd, Jazmyn Mader (18:48.0) was 54th, freshman Ellery Bazley (19:26.6) 62th and senior Erja Smith (20:45.1) 72th.

“Jaci Hayes followed the race plan to start out slow and really moved up in place throughout the course. She is primed to have a nice season for us,” Mosher said. “Our girls team was down in numbers for this race so we only had a varsity squad. This is a very closely-knit group of girls who I can see improve greatly this year.”

Freshman Emileigh Dallman paced the Comets with a 18th-place finish (16:23.6). Freshman teammate Kaiya Zurfluh (16:56.9) was 24rd, senior Madison Peters (17:32.7) 33rd, senior Megan Anderson (17:59.8) 42nd and freshman Payton Wacholz (18:01.8) came in 44th.

Freshman Dayna Karls led the Glarner Knights with a time of 17:00.4, which was good enough for 26th place. Junior Molly Molencamp was 55th (18:54.3), sophomore Alexa Thayer was 64th (19:33.9), Emily Streiff was 70th (20:25.4) and sophomore Dylan Noll was 74th (20:55.4).