Mifflin County girls XC shines at Altoona Saturday

By Kenny Varner Jr.
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Updated: September 16, 2023

Courtesy of Neil Breneman

The Mifflin County High School Girls Cross Country tackled the Altoona cross country course on Saturday, September 16 at the Mt. Lion Invitational. Amilia Coffey was close to her season best and brought home a medal crossing the finish in 29th place with 124 competitors. Amilia continues to lead our team as our strongest runner in her Sophomore year. Her time was very close to what she ran BVI which is our home course. It becomes more difficult running a course that you aren’t as familiar with.

Altoona is an interesting course. It has a nasty hill that intimidates a lot of runners and yet it’s not uncommon to see runners PR. The cooler weather was a welcomed change. I am hopeful the cooler temperatures are here to stay. That in combination with their continued training and staying mentally “fit” will be the key as we push toward October.

We celebrated Alexis Anderson’s birthday as we departed the high school early in the morning and she went out and ran second for the team at 25:14. Mary Kanagy, third for the team, continues to excel in her first year of cross country and was close to Alexis at 25:23, a new PR for her.

The girls varsity team celebrated 5 season bests and 3 PR’s. We had a great week of team building which is exciting to see them all interacting and enjoying time together despite the tremendously hard work they put in. I was reminded today how tough these young women are. One of our top girls ran into some trouble with severe side stitch pain but continued to press on. I know she wasn’t happy with her time but she finished the race, which is something to celebrate!

Next week’s schedule will be intense with a meet on Tuesday and make-up meet on Thursday. When we have meets that close it’s hard to do some of the training I would like to do, but the race experience is good too, especially for our newer runners.