LeCours win leads FHS cross country in opener
The Farragut senior was happy to be wrong.
On Saturday, Sept. 5, LeCours crossed the finish line 12.7 seconds ahead of CAK’s Sophie Lee, claiming first place in the girls 5k portion of the Victor Ashe Fall Classic to open her senior year.
“It was kind of crazy,” said LeCours, who clutched her trophy mere moments after her finish of 19 minutes, 2.61 seconds. “The whole race, I was just on everyone’s tail. Then I passed a CAK girl on the last hill, and I could have sworn she was right behind me. But everyone said I won by like a mile. I was kind of in shock but really happy about it.”
The individual title made for a strong start
for FHS, which claimed third placed in boys and girls team results with scores of 153 and 103, respectively.
“We talked before the race, and that was obviously the goal,” FHS coach Garrett Jones added. “Hardin Valley, West and Maryville have a lot of good runners, too, and we wanted to go out and be competitive. She put together a good race plan, battled hard and came home with it. We’re super proud of her, and now we’re chasing Gina Rouse’s record.”
Speaking of Rouse, a Farragut alum, her CAK team notched first place in the girls results with three runners in the top six overall.
Lee (19:15.4) placed second, while Haylee Gasparic (19:30.4) took third with Emery Adams (19:59.1) in sixth.
“We have a fairly young team, and we have a couple new kids that have joined,” Rouse said. “Haylee came in from Karns as a freshman, then Sophie came over from Grace Christian. It’s still early in the season, but I feel like we’re in a great spot.
“I think it was great for us to run against some of the bigger public schools in the area and get some exposure to their teams and see where we landed. I’m looking forward to more of that as the season progresses on the girls and boys side.”
In the boys team results, Hardin Valley posted a 44 to clinch first place. Stephen Bell (16:28.5) paced the Hawks in fourth overall, while Aiden Rufi (16:43.3) came in seventh with Isaac Socha (16:47.5) and Ignacio Almonte (16:52.0) in ninth and 10th, respectively, to put four athletes in the top 10 finishers.
HVA saw a similar finish in the girls race, notching second as a team with 53 total points despite the absences of Alexandra Vesser and Ana Berkheimer.
“You can’t replace those two,” HVA coach John Witsell said. “But we are really excited, because our year over year improvement has been huge across the board on both sides.
“We ran extremely well against the competition, especially on the girls side with missing our top two runners. The hard work they’ve put in up to this point will allow them to run very fast toward the end of the season.”
Behind LeCours, Addison Haynes placed 10th for the Lady Admirals with Chase Temples (17:29.5) and John Williams (17:41.5) as the top boys finishers for FHS.
“Really proud of the group, especially in this heat,” said Jones, who noted his boys team had a “little delay” on the starting line.
“So we had a little bit of a rougher day,” he added. “But I feel confident in the group I’ve got, and if we get them where we need to be, we can be right there with the best of ‘em. We battled hard and competed well for a group that lost a lot of seniors last year. We’re trying to rebuild as a young group, but we’re competitive.”
