At the Milaca mega-meet on Saturday, the largest one day high school cross country meet in the world, the United South Central girls’ team finished first with the team’s top runner setting a school record.

Emily Mantor, a junior, led the Rebels and the meet with a time of 14 minutes, 34.8 seconds. Mantor’s run cut three seconds off the USC school record.

USC’s Hannah Goemann trailed closely behind finishing second in the meet.

“Emily and Hannah have deservedly gotten a lot of recognition and are both well known around the state in running circles,” said Rebels head coach Kent Viesselman.

According to Viesselman, the key to the team’s success has come from the improvement of the other runners including Amber Klein, Tikvah Schwartz, Tenley Schwartz and Beth Stevermer.

“They all worked hard over the summer and are racing very competitively,” Visselman said. “It’s fun to watch them improving every week.”

In addition to the girls’ first-place finish, the boys’ team placed 10th, two spots higher from last year, in spite of there being five more teams represented.

Adam Stevermer led the Rebels with a 36th place finish, his best time of the year while Eric Redman finished 51st setting a personal record.

“I think we competed pretty well, but we looked a little tired,” said Viesselman. “Hopefully we’ll get rested up in the next week or so.”

The mega-meet had more than 5,000 athletes from more than 150 schools competing in four different classes.

See the scoreboard for results.