Atteberry, Johnson win individual titles at Ozark 7 meet

Oct. 23—Kip Atteberry's main goal heading into the cross country season was to log the first sub-17 minute finishing time of his career.

The junior standout for Thomas Jefferson Independent came oh-so close to accomplishing the feat on Friday.

By crossing the finishing line at Missouri Southern's Tom Rutledge Cross Country Course in 17 minutes, 0.1 seconds, Atterberry claimed a second consecutive individual title at the Ozark 7 Conference Championship as he bested the rest of the field by more than 75 seconds.

"It's a little rough to come that close to getting the time I wanted, but I'm happy with the result since I didn't really have anybody else to help pace myself," Atteberry said. "So my goal was to just stay as close to the cart as possible. I wanted to pull away from everybody else as fast as I could."

Atteberry, who finished 55th at last year's Class 1 state meet, recorded a time that was nearly two minutes faster than the one he logged in his first-place finish in last season's conference meet.

"It feels really good to see that amount of progress in just a year," he said. "I think I was upper-18s last year. My hope is to break into the 16s because I want to get on track for that Division I 16:20 time by my senior year."

Rounding out the top five individuals in the boys race was runner-up Michael Parrigon (18:16) of McAuley Catholic and then College Heights Christian runners Caleb Quade (18:27), Rolen Sanderson and Derrick McMillan (18:43).

The Cougars claimed the team conference title with 30 points and were followed by McAuley (48), Wheaton (72) and Thomas Jefferson (83). All six of the CHC runners who competed finished in the top 11, with Jace Edwards placing eighth, Corbin Thomas placing 10th and Brayden Youngberg placing 11th.

McAuley had two runners finish in the top 10 in Parrigon and seventh-place Phillip Motazedi (18:51). Armando Alberto placed 12th, while Drew Zeb finished 13th, Kable Reichardt 14th, Kevin Tran 15th, Cliff Nolan 17th and Grant Horinek 19th.

"I thought our guys really ran great," McAuley coach Andy Youngworth said. "I knew coming into the race that College Heights would be the favorite and they would really have to have probably all six or seven of their guys run their worst races for us to have a chance. ... But College Heights ran great like we expected. Coach (Phillip) Jordan does a great job with those kids.

"Michael Parrigon was great for us. He's battled some injuries. He's also ironically playing soccer for College Heights this season. So he knows these guys really well. For him to run this well against really his teammates, it's great."

GIRLS

Jayli Johnson picked an opportune time to record a new personal best.

The College Heights junior crossed the finish line in 21:54 to win the individual conference title in the girls race, finishing 36 seconds ahead of runner-up Kendall Ramsey, who is a returning state qualifier for the McAuley Warriors.

"About 1 1/2 miles in, I felt pretty strong and started to pull away from everyone," Johnson said. "I usually feel stronger up the hills, and so that's when I tried to make moves to pass people early on."

Friday marked Johnson's first conference title after finishing top-five a year ago.

"That was one of the goals coming in," she said. "Another goal is I really want to go to state this year. It will probably take another time like this one or faster."

Rounding out the top five individuals were third-place Sarah Mueller (22:54) of TJ, fourth-place Lakeisha Wise (23:39) of Wheaton and fifth-place Madi Carson of CHC.

College Heights also claimed an uncontested team conference title since no other school had the minimum number of five runners needed to compete for the team championship. Sophia Moore (25:04) placed seventh, while Katie Moss (25:39) and Stella Moore (27:58) placed 10th and 11th, respectively.

Ramsey was the lone competitor for the McAuley girls and recorded a personal-best time of 22:30.

"She had been struggling with some injuries and missed some time because she was playing some volleyball," Youngworth said of Ramsey. "To be honest, she had a bit of a disappointing finish at the Clever meet for a lot of reasons, and she finished like 57th with a lot of the College Heights girls beating her. But she ran really well today with a lot of focus and commitment. So I was very proud of her for bouncing back the way she did. This is a good race to go into districts on."

Thomas Jefferson had four runners finish in the top 12, with Mueller placing third, Macie Shifferd (23:57) placing sixth, Mia Grubbs (25:20) placing ninth and Julianne Wachtel (29:44) placing 12th.

College Heights, McAuley and Thomas Jefferson will compete in the Class 1 District 2 meet in Clever on Oct. 30.

"I really appreciate Missouri Southern and the Ozark 7 conference for allowing us to have the conference meet here today," Youngworth said. "This is an awesome course, and obviously it has held regional and national college meets plus the Southern Stampede with over 2,000 athletes. So any chance you get to run on a course like this, it's just a great opportunity for these kids. I appreciate our parents that helped support it and donated some money to get the timing system so that we could do it like we would at a district meet."

Contact Jared Porter on Twitter at @JaredRyanPorter.