WASECA &045; The United South Central/Alden-Conger boys’ cross country team ran to an impressive win at the Waseca Invitational Thursday.

The Rebels, running at full strength for one of the first times this season, finished first with 28 points

to second-place Waseca’s 55 to win the six-team meet.

Jake Stenzel led the locals with a second-place finish, followed closely by Eric Youngblom (third), Brad Tomschin (fourth), and Bob Schmitz (sixth). Matt Mueller (13th) and Spencer Niebuhr (17th) were the other Varsity finishers.

“I was impressed with the performance of our boys’ team,” commented coach Kent Viesselman.

“We’ve been working hard the last two weeks, and I know the kids were tired before the race ever started.”

The girls ran second to a rapidly improving team from Waseca.

Waseca tallied 37 points, while the Rebels were at 48.

Jamie Klein led the Rebels with a “very-controlled” fourth-place finish. Becca Bryson (fifth) and Katie Schultz (seventh) also finished in the medals. Megan Jensen (13th), Joelle Elmer (19th, and Katie Jensen (22nd) were the other Rebel runners.

“We’re a little nicked up on the girls’ side right now,” commented Viesselman. “Nothing serious, but we’ve been training very hard, with a focus more on the end of the season. We held a couple of girls out of the meet, and we had a couple more that ran but were not 100 percent. Next week we have the Gopher/Valley meet, and the week after that it’s the section meet. We’ll definitely be ready to go.”