Leading Tiger runner for second straight week
The good news for the Tigers was that they continued to meet coach Lisa Lippold's requests that they run together as a team and they continue to drop their finishing times.
The bad news was that even though those missions were largely accomplished, Farmington finished at the bottom of the team standings at Thursday's talent-filled AppleJack Invitational run at Lakeville's Aronson Park.
State powerhouse Rosemount placed all five of its point-scorers in the top 10 to defeat Andover 43-55 for the meet title. Minnetonka was well back in third with 105, followed by Lakeville South 140 and Lakeville North 174. Farmington totaled 356 points, 30 behind 13th place Math and Science Academy.
All seven Tiger runners finished within a minute of each other with Adam Wallenta leading the way for the second straight week, finishing 64th with a 17:55.1 clocking. Jordan Lugowski also broke the 18-minute mark over the 5000-meter route, finishing 65th in 17:59.3
Dan Block (71st; 18:06.7); Tanner Grubb (74th; 18:13.3) and Jake Rudeen (82nd; 18:30.9) were the other Farmington point scorers. Caleb Eiffert ranked 86th in 18:39.3 and Ben Olson 91st in 18:54.9.
All seven Farmington runners lowered their times from last week's Faribault Invitational.
"I was so happy with how all the runners ran," Lippold, "so I was surprised to see that we got last place overall.
"We are going to continue to look at the big picture which is our times are dropping significantly week by week and we are still in training mode...We are excited to see where we will finish when it comes to the conference and section meets.
Next Thursday (Sept. 22) the Tigers take a break from the metro area competition when they travel south for the Pine Island Invitational.
