Jochen, Consol girls take district cross country title

The cold front didn't blow through until after the District 12-5A cross country meet, too late to cool off Karis Jochen and the A&M Consolidated girls team.

Jochen, a junior who is the top-ranked runner in Texas, ran away from the field to repeat as district champion Thursday morning at the Top Tier Training course near Cooks Point. Consol's girls also won the team title, reclaiming their place atop 12-5A after finishing second last year.

The Lady Tigers got a 1-2 finish from Jochen and freshman Kelsie Warren and had five of the top 10 finishers to win the meet with 27 points. Temple took second place at 43 points and Harker Heights grabbed the third berth at regionals with 81.

Consolidated's boys scored 46 points, making it closer than expected while finishing second behind Killeen Ellison's 35. Junior Gus Roman was the top finisher for the Tigers, taking sixth place.

Bryan's building program showed progress with enough boys to field a full varsity team, finishing in eighth place. Jordy Briones led the Vikings at 17th overall.

Before the start of the varsity girls race, a couple of girls stood near the finish line and quietly speculated on what time "she" would run. When they mentioned the 11-minute mark, it was clear they were talking about Jochen, who is ranked 24th nationally and has been running elite-level 5K races this fall.

Looking comfortable with the shorter 2-mile race, Jochen posted a personal-best time of 11:07. She finished almost a minute ahead of Warren, who fell down during the race but still took second at 11:58 on a day when times generally were slower than they had been on the same course two weeks earlier.

"I appreciate everyone's encouragement and high expectations, but I'm not running for that," Jochen said. "It's kind of exciting, but I don't really try to think about everyone else when I'm running. I'm running for my team, for my Lord and for myself."

Jochen was happy that her new-look team regained the district title after being four points behind Temple last year. Jochen and Chaiss Matthews, who finished sixth in 12:39, were the only Lady Tigers scorers who ran for the varsity at district last fall.

Harmoni Whittenton took eighth place in 12:48 and Taylor McGinnis was 10th with a time of 12:57. Consol's other runners were Montana Caler (20th, 13:22) and Laura Casper (23rd, 13:25).

"We brought a lot of new people in and they bought into the training," Consol girls coach Rodney Wellmann said. "They did everything we asked them to, and here we are today putting five in the Top 10 and our six and seven ran great. That's as good as we could have expected."

Wellmann said Matthews has been battling injuries for the last month, and her sixth-place finish was outstanding.

While the Consol boys took second for the second consecutive year, Roman moved up one place in the individual standings at sixth. The junior covered the 5K course in 18:22. The Tigers had two more runners in the top 10, with Patrick Alexshonis taking eighth in a time of 17:44 and Daniel Casper finishing ninth at 17:46.

Ellison's Silvester Harrison won the individual competition by running 16:16, helping the Eagles win the team title with 35 points. Consol scored 46, and defending champion Harker Heights took third at 62.

"Considering the things that have happened in the last few weeks -- we've had some sickness and stuff -- it was a pretty good day," boys coach Mike Skinner said. "We were closer than I thought we would be to Ellison. Patrick wasn't in our top seven last week because he was sick, so he came through for us. Daniel just made our top seven in the last week or so. You talk about somebody that popped a race at the right time ... that was huge for us."

For Bryan, Briones led the way with his 17th-place time of 18:22. The other Viking finishes included: Mario Paez (41st, 20:32), Nikolas Chase (45th, 21:21), Chris Vivero (50th, 22:21), Josh Irwin (51, 25:32) and Oliver Davis (52, 25:50).

Bryan had one entry in the varsity girls race, with Rhonda Johnson finishing 22nd in a time of 13:25.

"I was impressed by the fact that we had girls and boys teams [including sub-varsity) here instead of just individuals as we've had in the past," Bryan coach Dan Williams said. "Three years ago we had one runner at district. Last year we had eight. This year we had 16. It's definitely building."

The top three teams and individuals will advance to the Class 5A Region II meet in Arlington on Nov. 5.