Fall Sports Update: Week 4

Cross Country

Senior Chipper Jorns ran away with the top spot on the boys’ varsity race at the Topeka Invitational on Saturday. Jorns ran a 17:23 with senior Joe Bahr finishing not too far behind him with a 17:52 time. The girls’ team had seven runners under 18 minutes. Senior Tiernan Shank finished first for the Lancers followed by juniors Annie Kuklenski and Hannah Arnspiger. The team finished first overall in the boys’ division while the girls finished second behind Topeka High.

The Lancers’ coach David Pennington credits the team’s improvement at Topeka to the technique and specific running drills at practice.

“We’ve been working on the teams’ running technique a lot in practice,” Pennington said. “There’s been a lot more training with hills and sprinting lately. Chipper is a great example of good running form. Every step he takes he looks like he gets faster. We’d like all our runners to have a consistent running form for the races.”

Girls’ Golf

The team placed fifth in their second tournament of the season at Alvamar Country Club in Lawrence, Kan. This was the first tournament of three that make up the Sunflower League. The team is currently in second place (3 strokes behind Olathe Northwest) in the League standings.

Senior Anne Willman tied for 6th and junior Jessica Young tied for 15th place.

The next tournament will take place at Blue Hills Country Club on Sept. 17 where the team will compete against schools from both Kansas and Missouri.

Results from the Lawrence Invitational

Team Scores:

BV NORTH -331
St THOMAS AQUINAS – 333
WASHBURN RURAL – 336
OLATHE NORTHWEST – 343
SM EAST – 346

Individual Scores:
1.AUDREY JUDD, Olathe Northwest, 74*
2. NATALIE CURRAN, BV North, 74
3. JEAN TYRELL, BV North, 74
4. BALE WINSLOW, St Thomas Aquinas, 75
5. CASSIE WANG, Olathe Northwest, 77
T6. HALEY FLORY, Washburn Rural, 79
T6.ANNE WILLMAN, SM East, 79
T6. ALEXA HENDERSON, BV West, 79
9. KACI DILLINGHAM, Washburn Rural, 80
10. BLAKE FINGALSEN, Manhattan, 81

Tennis

The girls’ tennis team swept Districts this past saturday winning all of their singles matches and only losing two doubles games. The girls then took on Sion on Monday. They were victorious in all doubles matches and sophomore Elizabeth Barnickel won her singles match, which was enough to bring the overall victory for the lady lancers.

The match Thursday versus Blue Valley Northwest was cancelled, due to poor weather conditions. The match will be rescheduled, but is to be determined. The girls have a tournament at Pembroke Hill on Saturday.

“[The tournament] on Saturday should take all day,” Senior Elizabeth Wilcox said. “We just need to be fresh and be ready to play.”

Soccer

After winning the KAMO Varsity tournament for two years straight, the boys’ soccer team were defeated by Olathe East, 3-0 on Tuesday night. The boys’ were scored on early in the first half. After pushing numbers forward late in the second half, the Lancers were caught out two more times, losing hope of a win in their first Sunflower League game.

McKenzie Swanson | The Harbinger Online

On Thursday night, the Lancers bounced back, beating SM North 10-0. The Lancers will play again tonight, 6 p.m. at the SM Soccer Complex against Kapaun-Mt Carmel.

Football

Coming off a big 30-7 over Olathe North last week, the undefeated Lancers will travel to CBAC tonight to take on the 0-2 Olathe Northwest Eagles.

The Lancers and Eagles are coming in as possibly the two best passing teams in the league. Senior Jordan Darling, with two games in the columbia blue and black under his feet, will look to keep rolling in yards by finding receivers like senior Connor Rellihan. The Ravens will try to capitalize with the hot hand of Holdyn Halperin who threw for 322 yards and one touchdown against Olathe East last week.

“Our secondary hasn’t had a real test but I feel like we can handle whatever they throw at us,” senior David Sosna said. “Time to play as a full defensive unit- offense will always take care of itself.”

Sosna suffered a Grade 5 AC Separation (shoulder injury) last week, but will play in tonight’s game.

Gymnastics

The gymnastics team is continuing their training after placing second at their first meet of the season. They are preparing for this Saturday’s meet, The North Invitational, by focusing on skills that didn’t go well at the previous meet.

“I’ve been working on everything,” senior Emily Kaplan said. “but my bars [routine] especially needs some work.”

Because the SM North team practices with East, the meet will be held at 11 a.m. in the East gym on Saturday, Sept. 15. All schools in the Shawnee Mission School District will be competing, excluding Newton High School.

Volleyball

Last Saturday varsity volleyball competed in their first tournament, MoKan, at Lee’s Summit West. The girls started the day off in a tough pool including some of the region’s top teams: St. James, St. Teresa’s and Blue Springs South. The girls had a rough day and lost every match.

“The tournament was really tough and even though the scores don’t show it, we fought really hard and had some great moments,” Senior Elizabeth Arnold said. “We haven’t let the losses bring us down.”

On Thursday night varsity volleyball played a quad against SMW and SMN. The girls went 2-0 for the night, and managed to sweep SMN 25-6 in the first set.

“I think we played really good,” Senior Ashley Allegri said. “We were playing against teams that weren’t as tough as some of our competition so we really had to focus on playing at our level and not down to their level.”