Most Valuable – Alejandro Guerrero and Zan Lora
Most Improved- David Pacheco Moses Pacheco Taylor Rogers Alex Steele
Hardest Working – David Romo
Best in the Weight Room- Luis DeAnda Blake Hanson

The South Sioux City Cross Country Awards winners were recognized at a banquet at the El Ranchito in South Sioux City. These awards are voted on by the team.  The boys program made some strides toward competitive success. The biggest plus was that fact that twenty boys participated in the cross country season. Secondly, we began to develop a ‘running attitude’ toward the end of the season. We set two school records. Alejandro at the Vermillion Invitational and Zan at the River Cities Conference Meet at Omaha Skutt.
Alejandro and Zan qualified for the Nebraska State Meet. We were in a difficult district with all three district teams finishing in the top nine. Alejandro finished his senior season meeting his goal of qualifying for in the State Meet. Zan will get a chance to return. David Pacheco and Moses Pacheco took advantage of the summer running program and kept a record of their workouts. All during the year they were 1 to 2 minutes faster than last year. If they do that again this summer they will improve even more. Hopefully their teammates will see that year round conditioning is valuable.
Alex and Taylor just kept getting better throughout the year. Taylor simply came to practice and worked hard every day. I’m sure he was surprised by his progress.  Taylor will only get better. Alex tried cross county for the first time and improved almost eight minutes from his first attempt to run 5000 meters.
David Romo lead by example all year and our team members recognized that fact. David had some little injuries that kept him from his best race but next year he will be competitive.
The same  team recognition can be said for Luis and Blake. The weight room can be a pretty lonely place after practice. It’s good to have some kids that are disciplined to work at developing that extra strength that is so important for injury prevention and endurance.
We have five of our six varsity runners returning so our plan is to be competitive as a team next season.
It’s always easy to talk about next year but we feel we made some progress this season.

South Sioux City Girls Cross Country Team Competed in the River Cities Conference Cross Country Meet:
The girls finished 3^rd, 4 points out of 2^nd place.  This is the highest placing for the girls in the last 5 years.
Leading the team was Brittany Stabe finishing 3^rd place in a time of 16:54, 32 seconds off the course record.
Also competing was Autumn Boyer 8^th, 17:24, Karyn Kelley 13^th, 17:35, Sidney Thesenga 32^nd, 19:13, Hillary Palsma, 34^th, 19:49, and Emily Kavanaugh, 40^th, 21:08.
Running in the junior varsity race was Kacie Kavanaugh in a time of 21:11.
 

Last evening the SSC girls XC team competed in the city meet.  The team finished 3^rd.  Leading the Cardinals in the varsity race was Brittany Stabe with a 3^rd place finish in a time 16:02.  Also running was Karyn Kelly, 7^th with a time of 16:30, Autumn Boyer 9^th in 16:32, Hillary Palsma in 27^th in 19:23, Emily Kavanaugh in 33^rd in 20:41, and Kacie Kavanaugh in 34^th in 21:28.  Grace Horner ran in the junior varsity race running a personal best 20:54 and finishing 35^th.  Sidney Thesenga was running in the 4^th spot for the girls until she suffered a minor knee injury half way through the race and couldn’t finish.  Good job to all the girls.