The Bellwood boys and girls cross country teams ran at the Saint Francis Invitational last Saturday at B&D Acres in Tyrone and had both strong team finishes and top individual place-winners.

The boys team placed 4th out of 13 teams and the girls placed 6th out of 11. The heat during the boys race rose from 71 degree to 79 degrees, making it a hot one.

Martin Fatzinger continued his stellar senior season by coming in 8th place out of 127 runners with a time of 18:47, earning a spot on the medal stand. Rounding out the top 7 boys runners for Bellwood were Bryce Hollenbach (19:17), Cameron Gallagher (20:32), Luke Gurekovich (21:43), Domanick Halerz (21:53), Hunter Shura (21:56) and Braylon Litzinger (22:24).

“The Saint Francis race was a deceiving course,” Gahllagher said. “We thought it would be a fast course, but we didn’t realize the amount of hills it would have. The heat didn’t help either. There was some discouragement seeing our times, but for the season we’re excited to see where we can go. We have a lot of fast kids on our team and a lot of kids in general. So that’s exciting. Numbers mean a lot in cross country. We definitely have a chance of making it to states as a team.”

On the girls side, junior Blake Pennington continued her great start to the season by running a 22:10 and placing 13th out of 130 runners. Like Fatzingfer, she had a spot om the medal stand.  Thge top  7 girl runners for B-A were  Julie Kraft (23:20), Peyton Hammond (24:30), Ava Franks (26:23), Sarah Kraft (27:11),Chloe  Stoltzfus (27:55) and Morgan Snowberger (29:12).

“I think the team did really well considering how hot it was and that it was our first time running on this course,” said Pennington. “It was definitely challenging, but invitationals are always fun because of the competition. I think everyone who ran did amazing.”

The course was located on the B&D farm on Huntingdon Furnace Road, which is on the periphery of Tyrone, just outside of Birmingham.