Westhoffs winners at Wellsville

WELLSVILLE -- Fort Scott High junior Cassidy Westhoff won the varsity race at the Wellsville Invitational here Thursday, bettering the runner-up mark by roughly a minute and a half.

Not bad considering that at the beginning of the day, she was preparing to race at Cherryvale.

Adverse conditions on the course at Big Hill Lake forced Parsons High School to cancel its invitational for the second consecutive season. Not wanting to sit out the week, Fort Scott made arrangements to run at Wellsville instead.

Westhoff finished the four-kilometer girls' course with a time of 15 minutes, 42 seconds. Senior Kaylynn Smith of Spring Hill was second in 17:09.63.

Westhoff was the only Tiger in the varsity race. The meet included many east-central Kansas teams Fort Scott doesn't usually see in their meets, such as Spring Hill, Eudora, Prairie View, Osawatomie and Louisburg.

Fort Scott sophomore Devin Brooks finished fourth in the boys' 5K varsity race in 18:43.76. The winning time was 17:16.16 turned in by Spring Hill sophomore Dylan Brenneman. Senior Jon Miller of Eudora was second in 18:08.03 and Wellsville junior Brandyn Brewster was third in 18:13.20.

Garrett Tatro finished in 21st place for Fort Scott in 19:57.77. Zach Ballou ran a time of 21:22.49 to finish 45th.

Fort Scott's Mallory Westhoff and Paxsten Eads finished 1-2 in the girls' 4K junior varsity race. Westhoff finished in 18:30.74 followed by Eads in 18:35.97 and Jayhawk-Linn's Hannah Tingler in 18:55.42.

Clare Gorman finished 8th for the Tigers in 20:06.40. Lily Zimmerman was 12th in 21:12.80 followed by Kaylee Coombs 13th in 21:25.06. Kylie Bruner was 17th in 21:50.99. Olivia Houston was 35th in 26:25.71.

The Tigers won the team title with 23 points followed by Eudora with 35, Louisburg 73 and Prairie View 102.

In the boys' JV race, run over five kilometers, Ben Morris placed 13th in 22:06.97 and Dalton Carpenter was 49th in 30:53.15.

Fort Scott's teams will take part in the Doc Stiles Invitational at Iola on Tuesday.