Through this weekend’s rainy and muddy conditions across the state, Manhattan High\u2019s cross country teams delivered one of their most impressive performances of the season \u2014 sweeping both regional championships Saturday at Wichita East to punch their tickets to the Class 6A state meet.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a wild, wet, cold and very muddy day at Wichita,\u201d head coach Susan Melgares said in a statement. \u201cOur kids came to play. They ran very tough to qualify both teams to the state meet.\u201d<\/p>\n
The top-ranked Indians\u2019 girls once again set the tone, placing five runners inside the top seven to win the regional title by a 36-point margin. Gabrielle Converse led the charge with another commanding victory, running 19:14.79 to secure the individual crown ahead of teammates Zara Koehn (second, 19:35.78) and Isla Spreer (third, 19:45.92).<\/p>\n
Andie Strathman (sixth, 20:32.68) and Allison Knopp (seventh, 20:33.49) rounded out the scoring five as Manhattan posted an eye-popping team total of 19 points \u2014 a dominant showing against a field that included Washburn Rural and Lawrence Free State.<\/p>\n
On the boys\u2019 side, sixth-ranked Manhattan captured the team championship in dramatic fashion, edging Centennial League rival Washburn Rural on a tiebreaker after both squads finished with 62 points. The win marked Manhattan\u2019s second consecutive postseason team title and underscored its depth and balance.<\/p>\n
Jaxon Wheeler paced the Indians with a sixth-place finish in 17:50.17, followed closely by Benjamin Huser (ninth, 17:57.66) and Patrick Huser (10th, 17:58.24). Wilson Wesch (17th, 18:17.35) and Levi Gurgel (20th, 18:21.14) rounded out the scoring five, while Kyler Grogg (24th, 18:34.75) and Will Richards (27th, 18:40.97) provided the crucial sixth-runner edge that sealed the tiebreaker.<\/p>\n
The sweep continued Manhattan\u2019s postseason dominance, following a perfect-score performance for the girls at the Centennial League Championships the week prior.<\/p>\n
Both teams will compete next at the KSHSAA Class 6A State Championships, set for Saturday, Nov. 1 at Rim Rock Farm in Lawrence \u2014 a return to one of the state\u2019s most historic courses where the Indians will aim to cap a remarkable season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Through this weekend’s rainy and muddy conditions across the state, Manhattan High\u2019s cross country teams delivered one of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17864,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[995,996,994,998,997,75,84,83,9,24,63,319],"class_list":{"0":"post-17863","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-manhattan","8":"tag-baseball-playoffs-and-champions","9":"tag-major-league-baseball","10":"tag-major-league-baseball-competitions","11":"tag-major-league-baseball-postseason","12":"tag-major-league-baseball-teams","13":"tag-manhattan","14":"tag-manhattan-headlines","15":"tag-manhattan-news","16":"tag-new-york","17":"tag-new-york-city","18":"tag-nyc","19":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17863","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17863"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17863\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17864"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17863"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17863"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17863"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}