The Cougar varsity boys cross country team had a third-place finish last Saturday at the inaugural Central Kentucky Run for the Gold, held at the Elizabethtown Sports Park.

Attendance was light for this event, as it usually is in the first year of any cross country meet. The boys varsity 5K race had just nine teams and 69 runners at the start. Meade County won the team title with 38 points, with North Hardin second with 58. The Cougars were just four points behind in third place with 62 points.

Sophomore Bret Crawford finished second individually with a time of 16:41.72, less than seven seconds behind winner Marcus Terrell, from North Hardin.

Junior Sheldon Jones also had a top-10 finish, coming in seventh with a time of 17:08.51. Others scoring points for the Cougars included junior Clay Priddy, 13th in 17:47.48, sophomore Corbin Harris, 19th in 18:13.11, and sophomore Bradley Stone, 21st in 18:27.93.

Running out of the points for the Cougars were senior Justin Gallagher, 31st in 18:49.21, junior Blake Meredith, 44th in 20:09.04, and junior Jacob Hart, 59th in 21:56.73.

The Lady Cougars did not have any entrants in the varsity girls race.

The middle school boys and girls both had second-place finishes in their 3K races. With four teams and 40 runners in the boys race, Meade County won with 16 points, with the Cougars second with 53. Nelson County was third with 76 points.

The girls race had five teams and 41 runners. Meade County also won that team title with 28 points. Grayson County was second with 51 points and John Hardin was third with 81 points. Logan Greco, of Meade County, won the boys race with a time of 10:39.22. Kelsey Hughes, of Nelson County, won the girls race with a time of 12:36.53.

Jarrett Crawford was the first Cougar across the line, finishing fifth overall with a time of 11:30.11 Seth Elmore was 14th with a time of 12:45.78, Noah Saltsman was 19th with a time of 13:27.97, Cameron Roberson was 22nd in 13:40.06, and Nate Saltsman was 29th in 14:47.33. All those runners are seventh-graders.

Eighth-grader Teresa Graas was the first Lady Cougar to finish, coming in sixth overall with a time of 13:09.62, and eighth-grader Myriam Hanover was ninth in 13:31.77. Sixth-grader Kaylee Masden spent her morning playing basketball for the GCMS seventh-grade team, then ran in the afternoon for the cross country team. Masden finished 10th with a time of 13:32.09.

Seventh-grader Heather Priddy finished just behind Masden in 11th-place with a time of 13:35.22. The final Lady Cougar to score points was sixth-grader Olivia Lucas, who was 23rd with a time of 14:56.91.

There were just two teams and 30 runners in the girls elementary school 2.5K race and Grayson County had just three runners. Fifth grader Sydney Haze finished 12th with a time of 12:27.03, fifth grader Hannah Priddy was 18th in 14:41.34, and Amyrra Kirchen was 23rd in 15:51.89. Rebekah Howard, of Glasgow, was the individual winner with a time of 10:16.02.

The elementary school Cougars earned first place with 19 points. North Hardin, the only other team in the race, was second with 39 points. There were 23 total runners in the 2.5K race. The individual title went to Matthew Muse, from St. James, who had a time of 10:44.49.

Grayson County’s Brady Whobrey, a fifth-grader, was second in 10:54.76. Third grader Timothy Hanover was fourth in 10:57.12, fourth grader Lucas Gallagher was fifth in 11:04.84, fourth grader Eli Helm was sixth in 11:06.73, and fifth grader Jacob Vincent was eighth in 12:03.57.

Finishing out of the points were second grader Jackson Crume, 11th in 12:34.20, and second grader Nicolas Mudd, 16th in 14:31.28.