South Tama senior, Blake Keller, tackles a hill at the Trojans first cross country meet of the season at MCC. Keller finished the race in 6th place. Chronicle Photo/Allison Graham

The sun finally peaked out as the top finishers were coming across the finish line at South Tama’s first cross country meet of the season. The Trojans travelled to MCC’s campus on Thursday, August 27. It was a mostly cloudy evening with cool temperatures in the 60’s and a few stray raindrops.

The Trojans front-runner, senior Blake Keller, came in sixth overall. All in all it was a good start to his senior year with a finishing time of 17:30.

“I kinda wanted to get under 18 because I hadn’t done that yet this summer. My goals (for the season) are to get under 17 and try and qualify for state,” said Keller.

The course at MCC, which weaves in and out of a corn field and includes some beautiful scenery, contained moderate hills.

“It starts out pretty descent (and the) uphill doesn’t affect you much. When you go down the hill that gets you going really fast but you also have to come back up a hill and that really hurts,” said Keller.

Keller has put in a lot of work in the off-season to make improvements in his game. “My training plan this summer was just to get a lot of miles in. I was running a lot more miles than I was last summer,” said Keller.

South Tama’s only other varsity boys runner was Hunter Filloon who came in 20th at 18:34.

STC JV results: Jake Wilkerson 24:42, Nick Jordan 24:54, Daniel Mendoza 24:55