Platte County’s collective returning experience provided optimism, but ultimately, depth and the ability to integrate first-year contributors were the key to a near repeat showing in Saturday’s Class 4 MSHSAA Cross Country Championships. For the second straight year, the Pirates placed 10th in the final team standings with freshman Tyler Stambersky earning all-state honors on a sloppy and slow Gans Creek Cross Country Course in Columbia.
Platte County senior Maddie Nichols runs in the Class 4 MSHSAA Cross Country Championships on Saturday at Gans Creek Cross Country Course in Columbia.
The results came despite losing the top two finishers from a year ago in a senior class that included four total qualifiers.
Stambersky (16th; 20 minutes, 26.40 seconds) led a total of four runners for Platte County making their state debuts, and senior transfer Maddie Nichols (59th, 21:29.70), junior Madelyn Stewart (73rd, 21:47.70) and freshman Arsema Ayiche (95th, 22:18.80) also factored into the team score of 238, just 15 back of ninth-place Union. Madison Palmer, a senior, brought by far the most postseason experience as a four-time qualifier and posted an 89th-place finish while continuing to compete with a hip injury that requires offseason surgery.
Palmer finished 72nd as a junior and 144th as a freshman but missed state her sophomore year due to illness but contributed to each of Platte County’s four straight teams to earn automatic qualifying berths out of Class 4 District 4.
Platte County also returned senior Brooklynne Jenni (97th, 22:20.60) and junior Nora McCoy (108th, 22:35.30) as second-time qualifiers in a group of seven that captured Platte County’s first district title since 2006. Both improved their state finish on a day when times were generally slower due to muddy grounds caused by persistent rain in the hours leading up to the race.
Platte County senior Madison Palmer runs in the Class 4 MSHSAA Cross Country Championships on Saturday at Gans Creek Cross Country Course in Columbia.
Stambersky gave Platte County a fifth all-state finish in the past four years, joining school-record holder Sisely Mitchell (2021-2023) and Carmen Gentilia (2023), but didn’t challenge her PR of 19:54.50 — a mark set while leading the Pirates to another Suburban Conference White Division title while becoming just the eighth in program history to run a race under 20 minutes. The top 30 individuals in each class earn medals, and Stambersky became the first freshman for the Pirates to achieve the feat since Rebekah Geddes in 2014 when she also finished 16th.
Nichols, who previously ran in Florida before moving into the district for her senior season, went under 21 minutes in each of her previous two races but couldn’t replicate that in the final race of her career.
Stewart made the biggest move of any runner for Platte County, moving up 15 spots in the final 1,000 meters to end up in 73rd while completing a meaningful comeback story. A year earlier, she ran at districts but could not finish the race and then ended up out of the lineup for state in a disappointing finish to her sophomore season.
Platte County junior Madelyn Stewart runs in the Class 4 MSHSAA Cross Country Championships on Saturday at Gans Creek Cross Country Course in Columbia.
Earlier this season, Stewart set a PR at 21:20.62 at conference and ended up less than 30 seconds off of that Saturday.
Ayiche joined Platte County’s lineup midseason and then held a spot through the second half of the schedule and posted a faster time by exactly 11 seconds on the same course where she made her varsity debut in late September’s Gans Creek Classic. She finished right in between the only two seniors in Saturday’s race for the Pirates — Palmer and Jenni, who placed 115th as a junior and improved that by 18 spots in this year’s return. McCoy came in 118th as a first-year contributor last fall and then moved up 10 places in her second state race.
In addition to Palmer, Jenni and McCoy, Platte County went into the season with five returning qualifiers, which also included senior Annabel Beeman and junior Joanna Reil. Beeman competed as a sophomore and served as an alternate last year, while Reil placed 116th as a sophomore and 146th as a freshman when she took Palmer’s spot after she came down sick the week of the race. The Pirates utilized the depth all season before finding a combination to support a repeat 10th-place team finish — still the best since a partial team qualified and placed eighth in 2020. They were 13th in 2021 and 14th in 2022.
