Glenwood’s Berglund tops girls field at Abraham Lincoln invite

Glenwood’s Grace Berglund captured the individual title at the Council Bluffs Abraham Lincoln Cross Country Invitational at Iowa Western Community College Saturday.

Berglund’s time of 20:20.88 was five seconds better than runner up Contessa Guerrero-Jones of Southeast Polk. Southeast Polk did pick up the girls team title with a score of 32. Treynor was the runners up with 38 points followed by Glenwood with a third-place score of 85.

“The Abraham Lincoln meet is always loaded with tough competition,” said Glenwood girls coach Marissa Klindt. “The course itself is also pretty difficult, so we can’t compare times between the Glenwood meet and the Abraham Lincoln meet too much. Looking back on the race, we still have work to do. We need to close the gap between our second through fifth runners. Otherwise, that gap is really going to hurt us in future meets.

“As a team, we also have to work on fighting through our discomfort in the middle of the race because we are falling back too much at that point.”

Berglund held off Guerrero-Jones for the majority of the race and was the escape with her first individual championship of the season.

“She continues to get stronger, and we’re excited to see what she can do,” Klindt said.

The Rams’ Megan Hughes added a 16th place finish followed by 27th place Katelyn Harms, 35th place Maggie McChesney and 36th place Audrina Johansen

The Rams were without senior Caitlin Hebel because she was taking the ACT, but Klindt said she did have some senior girls step up in Johansen and her 25:04.70 and Averi Newman (42nd place) running a 25:39.90.

Katie Leick also led seven Glenwood runners in the top 15 to win the middle school race.

Riverside finished first, second and third in the boys race win the team title. The Bulldogs’ Dawson Henderson ran a top time of 17:47.44 followed by runner up Brody Henderson in 17:50 and third place Owen Fenner’s time of 17:53.71.

Council Bluffs Abraham Lincoln was the runner-up with 77 points followed by Omaha North with 78 points and the Rams’ 123 points for fourth.

Bryce Keller paced Glenwood with an 18th place time of 19:34.01.

Lucas Kauffman was 21st, followed by Jaxton Long in 22nd, Lucas Harms in 28th and Grant Sorensen in 36th.

The Rams’ Deagan Stanley won the middle school race with a time of 12:53.09.