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A good day for the Bognia family
About a decade ago, Austin Bogina helped his mother, Fort Scott High School head cross-country coach Tracey, hand out the medals at the end of the Tigers' annual home cross-country meet at the Great West Insurance grounds, 2801 S. Horton.
Thursday evening, Austin was receiving a medal as the winner of the boys' varsity race on a course his father, Greg, helped plot out while running for his aunt's (Piper James) Northeast-Arma team.
On a wet, sloppy day, young Bogina ran the five-kilometer (approx. 3.1-mile) course in 19 minutes, 4.95 seconds. That was about 14 1/2 seconds faster than the runner-up, Nate Pope of Iola.
"That's pretty special," Tracey Bogina said of her son's accomplishment. "It was such a good day to see all the kids be able to come out and compete hard in unfavorable conditions. But it was neat watching my son do well and it was neat watching my Tigers do well, too. So it was kind of double enjoyment."
The usual order of races was flipped just in case the rain falling upon Fort Scott got worse. This way, at least the varsity races would get in. The varsity girls ran first, followed by varsity boys, the JV girls and JV boys.
Jayhawk-Linn and Pleasanton also competed here.
The course layout was different, also, as one of the effects of the construction of the new Wal-Mart Supercenter was that water now builds up easier on the farthest reaches of the course. It had already been plotted to run a different course, which proved to be a fortuitous decision. Had the course not been changed, it might not have been possible to hold the race at all.
"We were tickled with the new course," Bogina said. "Greg came out and spent a lot of time laying out this course and it was just a great course. We're proud of how this course laid out and we appreciate what he did for us. Greg worked all afternoon to get it set up.
"We appreciate Mercy (the landowner) and Great West for allowing us to use this place because, to me, this is the most beautiful and the best course we run on all season. People love it here. And the nice thing about how this course was laid out was that you could see the entire race except for maybe about 600 meters. And that's pretty cool."
Labette County runners took the top two spots in the four-kilometer (2.5-mile) varsity girls' race but Chanute won the team title as it saw every one of its five runners finish in the top 12. Chanute scored 25 points while LCHS, the only other school with a full team, scored 30.
Individually, LeighAnn Omarkhail of LCHS won the race in 18:50.55 with teammate Kandi Voorhees second in 19:01.14. Brooke Sharp of Chanute was third in 19:13.36.
Fort Scott's only runner in the varsity girls' race was senior Kim Stone, who finished 19th in 23:23.95.
"She ran really well," Stone said. "She's a senior and we moved her up to varsity and she did a good job."
Sylvia Grant of Jayhawk-Linn finished in seventh place in 20:11.09 while teammate Meriel Long was ninth in 20:33.62. Rachel Richmond of Pleasanton was 13th in 21:31.65 and Cheyanne Reynolds, also from Pleasanton, was 23rd i 24:38.84. The top 15 runners in each race earned a medal.
Austin Bogina dominated the boys' varsity race from about the halfway point on. Pope finished in 19:19.42 while his Iola teammate, Kent Toland, was third in 19:33.65.
Charlie Sercer was the lone Tiger in the race, finishing 24th in 22:19.78.
"Charlie competed well in a tough varsity boys' division," Bogina said. "We ran the varsity races at the beginning, when there's a little bit better footing. But with this kind of rain, it was tough to get great footing. But I thought Charlie competed hard as he usually does."
Kelly Wadel was Pleasanton's lone representative in this race, finishing 25th in 22:22.58. David Troth represented Jayhawk-Linn with a 27th-place effort of 22:23.76.
Iola was the team winner with 27 points as it had four runners in the top 10. Chanute was next with 49 points followed by LCHS with 51 and Nevada with 97.
The junior varsity runners had the slickest footing to deal with. One runner in the boys' JV race slipped down and fell flat on his back. He stayed there for a couple of minutes as he recovered but then got back up and hustled to the finish.
"It was really challenging," Bogina said. "The course progressively got worse, so the JV kids had to battle much worse footing than the varsity did, so they had to step it up in the end. I was proud to see so many kids do so well."
Fort Scott won the girls' JV team title over Chanute, 24 points to 31, as the Tigers finished in the second through fifth scoring positions.
Jennica Rausch of Iola was the winner in 20:51.07 over four kilometers. Lisa Sprath of Chanute followed in 21:06.30.
Morgan Tourtillott finished fourth for the Tigers in 21:37.23. Jenna Harper was eighth in 22:27.43 with Leah Cassleman 13th in 23:17.34, Katelyn Torres 14th in 23:26.27 and Autumn Owenby 20th n 27:19.62.
Neither Pleasanton nor Jayhawk-Linn entered runners in this race.
Iola was the team champ in the 4K JV boys' race with 31 points followed by Southeast-Cherokee with 48, Chanute 54, Labette County 93 and Frontenac with 124.
Roman Yocham of Iola was the winner in 16:28.14. Keenan Gregory finished 13th for the Tigers in 18:04.54 and Julian Wichert was 23rd in 18:55.07.
Bryce Northcutt of Jayhawk-Linn was 21st with a time of 18:46.21 with teammate Ryan Poole 29th in 19:06.06.
Pleasanton's Dennis Moore was 34th in 19:38.93 with Rance Schoenhals 49th in 20:52.30 and Kyle Walker 66th in 24:03.78.