HAMILTON — It took plenty of guts for two Lake County runners to earn the glory last weekend at the Hamilton Invitational.

Polson’s Claudia Hewston continued her outstanding season to earn a second-place finish in 18:47, behind only Bigfork’s star, Makena Morley, who won by more than a minute.

“Claudia showed her strength and determination by surging ahead of two of her key Class A rivals and establishing herself as one of the favorites at the state meet in three weeks,” coach Matt Seeley said. “She has been getting better every week and adding some tactical savvy to her speed and fitness. It should be fun to watch Claudia in the next few weeks.”

Mission’s Paden Alexander took on some of the top runners in the state as well, pushing his own limits to prove that he’s not about to back down to a challenge.

“Paden went out leading the charge for the first mile and a half, proving what we have known all along — that he is a gutsy racer,” coach Patrick Murphy said. “Although he didn’t hold onto the lead, sometimes you have to go out hard to know what you are capable of.”

Alexander finished sixth place overall with a time of 16:56, right in the mix against the difficult field.

Filling the role of No. 2 for the Lady Pirates, sophomore Tegan Bauer (20:20) finished an impressive seventh overall.

“Tegan is a tough competitor and is gaining fitness just in time to go for a high finish at the championship meets at the end of the season,” Seeley said.

Hallie Hovenkotter (22:03), Amanda Stobie (23:33) and Marlee Seemann (23:42) also had great races to finish the scoring places for Polson.

“Hallie is becoming a very impressive runner and Amanda really moved up this week, dropping more than 30 seconds from her time in Missoula last weekend,” Seeley said.

Both the Polson boys and girls teams finished third. For the boys, senior Alex Nystrom once again led the boys with a fast time (17:16) and 10th place overall. Jared Rubel (17:48) also showed great form to get second for the team.

“In his first year of cross country, Jared has worked hard and proven he can compete with some of the best runners in the conference,” Seeley said.

Jimmy Bjorge (17:50), Tel Motichka (18:03) and Chaz Brewer (18:22) completed the scoring places for the Polson boys.

“The team was competing without last week’s frontrunner Travis Hayes who was out with a minor injury, but they still ran well and have high hopes for great results at the end of the year,” Seeley said.

The Pirate runners will head to Dillon this Saturday and will host the Northwestern A Championships on Oct. 15.

While coaches said that times were slower across the board on Saturday for both Mission and Ronan teams, that doesn’t mean they didn’t see great efforts from their athletes.

“We didn’t have very many kids that PRed,” Ronan assistant coach Noelle Decker said. “Everybody seemed about 20-30 seconds slower than their times had been. It’s hard to compare one course to the other.”

The Chiefs perhaps used some of that leftover homecoming excitement to pull out an impressive team finish, placing fifth, ahead of Mission and Anaconda. The team’s third, fourth and fifth runners crossed the line all within five seconds of each other, which was one of the goals for the day.

“The boys actually ran pretty darn well,” Decker said. “All year long our boys have been pretty consistent and they’re usually within 20-30 seconds of each other, but our third, fourth and fifth runners have been a minute back, and that’s what we’ve been working on — closing that gap. Now, we just have to shave some time off their overall time.”

Danny Romero charged ahead for the Chiefs, placing 18th in 17:50. Brady Oakland was again second in 18.20. Kollin Wroblewski (19:19), Timmy Woll (19:24) and Jaden McNair (19:25) rounded out the scoring with Robbie Hocker not far behind in 19:47.

On the girls’ side, Ashley Grandchamp went after it and turned in a very solid performance with a 17th-place finish in a time of 22:19.

“She was a bit disappointed in her time,” Decker said. “But she sure looked good — she looked strong.”

About a minute behind her, teammate Rachel Hardy (23:08) has been consistent for the Maidens. This week, Nicki Jo Mays jumped up in the lineup.

“She’s a hard worker and she usually runs herself into shape pretty fast,” Decker said. “I was tickled to see that she was able to pull herself up there.”

Ronan will toe the line in Whitefish this weekend as they prepare to host the Class 6B and 7B conference championships at Pablo’s Silver Fox Golf Course in just two weeks.

“Whitefish is a very flat, exactly 3-mile course,” Decker said. “It’s a pretty fast course, so it will be a good race before the conference championship the following weekend.”

Class B has not had a conference championship in a few years and Decker said it can be tough on the athletes to go two weeks without a meet before state.

“We offered to host that meet this year,” she said. “It’s to our advantage, the kids are used to running on the course so they should do well.”

While Mission’s top two girls were stuck filling in ovals at the SAT’s Saturday, their teammates went to work in Hamilton. Running ahead was Jane Makepeace who placed 22nd in 22:36.

“Kaylie (Durglo, 23:16.9) and Courtney (Heath, 23:16) pushed each other to finish harder and faster than they would have on their own,” Murphy said. “I’m looking forward to our divisional and state meets where I expect each of our girls to push and encourage one another to their best finishes of the season.”

The Bulldog boys team had a tough two meets last week. The first meet was Thursday in Thompson Falls, and almost the entire team recorded personal best times on the course.

“I was very pleased with their performances, and so were they,” Murphy said. “This is the beautiful thing about cross country. You get to directly see your improvement resulting from your hard work from week to week through your personal best times.”

Times weren’t quite so fast for the boys at Hamilton, but then again maybe they were just victims of the 20-30 seconds slower trend Noelle Decker was talking about.

“Running back to back for the boys definitely could have been a contributing factor to the slower times,” Murphy said. “That is tough to do — run a personal best time on Thursday and then to be expected to come back and run on Saturday. The boys did well taking on the challenge of having back-to-back meets, and I think that it will benefit them in the long run.”

With time ticking away on what’s been an impressive season for area athletes, these last two weeks will be when all that hard work begins to pay off.

“We are going to try to get a couple quality weeks of training in so that we are ready to go at divisionals,” Murphy said. “I’m excited, I think our teams are looking good and are ready for divisionals and state.”

Al Plant took the reins for the Arlee Warriors in Hamilton. Finishing in 19:06, he’s treading dangerously close to that elusive 18-minute time.

“Al isn’t quite 100 percent, but he had another great race in Hamilton,” coach Katea Dreiling said.

Dominic Burland (21:02), Zane Ligas (21:11) and Zach Felsman (22:46) rounded out the Arlee varsity lineup. Burland was able to cut 41 seconds off his previous best time to record one of the few PRs on the Hamilton course.

“Between injuries and illnesses, the two-day break between meets just wasn’t enough rest,” Dreiling said. “Both Plant and Burland competed well in Thompson Falls and were still able to impress me two days later in Hamilton.”

Winning the JV race, football player Donovan McDonald ran in his first cross country meet.

“He’s a very talented runner and will be an asset to the team,” Dreiling said. “It will be exciting to see what he can do as he gets more familiar with the meets and I get a better understanding of where to set my expectations.”

Thompson Falls Results

Mission boys

Alexander, Paden - 16:24 ? 3rd place

Stuart Grant - 18:56 - PR by :32

Raymond Matt - 19:20 - PR by :54

Daniels, Karl - 20:36 - PR by :22

Jamie Mullins - 20:41 - PR by 3:27

Patrick Eichert - 21:46 - PR by :37

Aram Serobyan - 24:13

Arlee boys

Al Plant - 19.27

Zane Ligas - 20.41 - PR by 1:30

Dominic Burland - 21.41 - PR by :08

Jordan Keltner - 22.01 - PR by 1:30

Zach Felsman - 22.41

Dakota Paul - 26.00 - PR by 1:00

Reece Pierce - 26.06

Arlee girls

Desirae Nault - 28.03 - course PR by :40

Ontequa Matt - 29.47