It is not often a team can say that they were perfect, but the Sparta boys cross country team can do that after finishing with a perfect score of 15 to win the Southern Illinois River to River Mississippi Division title Thursday.
To get the perfect score, Sparta’s runners took first through fifth place.
“We ran extremely well,” said Sparta coach Mark North. “We went to the conference meet with two goals—run a perfect 15 and we did that and actually had our runners place first through sixth overall. Our other goal was to beat the other 11 teams as if they ran as one team. We did that as well with only two runners from Benton and a runner from Murphysboro breaking up our pack.”
For Sparta, Wade Reeves took first with a time of 15:23 followed by Jon Hill (second, 15:44), Wes Bradshaw (third, 16:01), Trevor Morgan (fourth, 16:18), Tony Briscoe (fifth, 16:54) and Adam White (sixth, 16:59).
Behind Sparta, Carterville took second with (59) points followed by Pinckneyville (69), Nashville (87) and Anna-Jonesboro (143). Du Quoin did not have a team score.
On the girls side, Nashville took first with 42 points followed by Carterville (44), Sparta (68) and Pinckneyville (71).
The Lady Bulldogs were led by Kristina Wilson (third, 20:38), Kelsi Wallace (sixth, 20:52), Alexis Kohrs (10th, 22:02), Megan Gillison (24th, 25:44), Samantha Markley (26:27) and Sydney Wasson (28:10).
The Sparta junior varsity team also won the conference title as Kenny Heaton won the race in a time of 18:02 and Josh Bockhorn was second in 18:19.