EudoraNews.com

For the Eudora, a home meet is a good thing for several reasons.

First, there's the pleasure the Cardinals take out of running at home, Eudora cross country coach Paul Boone said. The team looks forward to the Eudora Invitational, set for Thursday at 4 p.m.

Second, the team runs well, and heading into the most important stretch of the season, that's just what the Cardinals are looking for, Boone said.

"They're real excited to run at home," he said. "They have a chance to run in front of their classmates, and we always get a good crowd for our home meet, so that makes it all worth it."

The event will begin at 4 p.m. with a one-mile middle school race. The varsity girls will run at 5 and the boys 30 minutes later.

It may be an extra week or more until the team really sees what it was able to pull from the day, however.

The home meet marks Eudora's last regular season action of the year. One week after the Cardinals cross the finish line on the course set between the high school and the middle school, they will be lining up at Rim Rock Farms for the league meet.

They'll be toeing the line at the regional meet more than two weeks later and one week after that, at least some of the Cards hope to be suiting up for the state race.

"We've been talking about how once you reach our meet, things really fly," Boone said. "You're only two weeks away from when a bad race will end your season.

"There's a sense of urgency in that we want to sharpen up."

Eudora's most recent entry into the race for state showed that the team still has some work to do, at least time wise, Boone said. The Cardinals ran Thursday at the Gardner Invitational, a six-team meet piled on a winding and forested course north of the town.

The race features some of the tightest turns and most aggressive landscape the team will encounter this year, factors that bled time away, Boone said.

In the end, he was happy with how the team competed.

Freshman Juan Ramirez led the boys, finishing fourth in the five-kilometer boys race with a time of 18:13.

Ivan Espinosa was fast behind him, finishing fifth in 18:37.

"I wasn't really happy. I was 10 seconds slower than my average," Espinosa said. "I'm not really thinking about (regionals and state). I'm just trying to do my best. I just want to get to state.

"If I get to state, I'll be happy."

John Hadle was 19th, moving up a great deal late in the race, in 19:54. Zack Courter was 24th in 20:11.

The boys finished fourth with 98 points. The girls, meanwhile, were second for their second consecutive week.

The Cardinals finished with 49 points, just three shy of first-place Independence, and well ahead of third-place Louisburg's 74.

Senior Emily Ballock was fourth on the four-kilometer course, finishing in 16:52. Liz Hoese was 8th in 17:48, Lauren Colman 9th in 18:04, Bre Miller 13th in 18:34 and Cathrine Weyde 16th in 18:55.

"Our girls ran well," Boone said. "We have some aches and pains we're trying to work through, but our top runners are feeling strong. Some of our younger runners are realizing this is a lot longer season than they're used to and you have to get past that."