The five runners factoring into the team score all came away with a positive preview Saturday morning in Columbia.
Platte County finished 15th out of 43 teams in the Gold Division of the massive Gans Creek Classic on the course that will host the Class 4 Missouri State Cross Country Championships again this fall. All five of the Pirates’ top finishers ran a personal-best for this particular 5k setup, while the sixth and seventh runners made promising debuts.
Platte County senior Andrew Johnson runs in the opening stages of the Gans Creek Classic on Saturday in Columbia.
Entering with wins in the first three starts of the season, Platte County senior Andrew Johnson again led the way but finished as a close runnerup to Lincoln Prep senior Isaac Rivera, who claimed the individual title in 15 minutes, 15.0 seconds. He built a lead in the middle portion of the race, and Johnson didn’t quite reel him all the way in during the closing stretch.
Johnson finished second 15.19.9 — the second-fastest time in program history and second only to the 15:05.60 he ran in the season-opening Tim Nixon Invitational. This also marked an improvement of nearly a full minute from the 16:03.30 he posted in a Class 4 all-state finish as a junior last fall. That marked his previous best time at Gans Creek and helps accentuate the improvement shown in his progression into one of the state’s elite runners.
However, Platte County also needed strong showings from senior Kade Meinke (44th, 16:40.7), sophomore Blake Herron (123rd, 17:26.2), junior Tanner Jenks (147th, 17:38.8) and sophomore Donavin Ness (198th 18:11.5) to post a team score of 489. The Pirates’ lineup averaged 17:03.42 — just off the program record of 16:57.12 set in 2021 during the first of back-to-back ninth-place team finishes in Class 4 at state.
Each time marked a personal-best for Gans Creek.
Platte County sophomore Elijah Jackson heads toward the finish line in the Gans Creek Classic on Saturday in Columbia.
Meinke continued to serve as the solid No. 2 for Platte County and went sub-17 for the first time in five runs on the course, while Herron posted the No. 3 time for the team for a second straight meet. Jenks had occupied that spot in the first two races of the season but returned from an injury that kept him out of the home Judge “Chris” Stubbs Invitational nine days before Gans Creek. He still lowered his previous best.
Ness again rounded out the top five and finished just inside the top 200 in a field of more than 350 runners for the Gold Division.
Platte County sophomore Elijah Jackson (277th, 19:02.6) and senior Lincoln Duane (307th, 19:45.8) made their varsity debuts for this particular course and continued to make a push for a lineup spot behind the five returners from last year’s state team. The Pirates also have junior Ben Letcher on the roster from the 2021 state team, but he did not run at Gans Creek.
Duane’s time came up just short of his overall PR of 19:40.30 set earlier this year at Raymore-Peculiar.
