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With a little home cooking and a lot of familiarity with the course, the North Branch girls cross country team ripped through the North Branch Golf Course like a pack of cheetahs.

The girls earned a rare perfect score, and an even more rare top seven sweep. Starting with Ali Zimmerman, who finished in first place with a time of 16:34, the Vikings came in at a rapid pace. Behind Ali was her sister Megan Zimmerman in second place with a 16:36. After the siblings, Haley Hasleiet, Alyssa Kroschel, Kendra Norman, Shayna Gray and Alyssa Ramberg rounded out the top seven, with all of them finishing in under 17 minutes.

"I am very happy with the way our athletes have been competing this year," Head Coach Brian Hasleiet said. "Cross country is as much or maybe even more about competing than it is about running."

Nobody understands that philosophy better than this pack of girls. Through the first lap, they were all bunched together in a group. It looked as though a few were waiting to break out, but a funny thing happened, they all broke out. They all picked up their pace simultaneously and it made for a thrilling sweep by the girls.

"That's the fun part about meets with this team," Hasleiet said. "They love to compete."

The girls won the meet with a perfect score of 15. The closest team to them was Rush City, who scored a 64.

Boys

Even though the guys don't have as much depth as the girls do, they still managed an impressive third place finish, just behind the Pine City Dragons.

The two catalysts for the Vikings were Tommy Toohey and Colin Charpentier. The junior pair has led the Vikings at every meet this year, and this one was no different. Toohey finished in third place overall with a time of 18:11, and Charpentier was hot on his tail with an 18:19 in fourth place.

Sophomore Jon Amundson finished in 11th place in a time of 19:51. Erik Fitcha and Ean Charpentier rounded out the varsity scoring for North Branch with a 14th place and 18th place finish, respectively.

The Vikings finished in third place with 50 points. They were just two points behind Pine City, who scored 48 points. Rush City won the meet with an impressive score of 25 points.

"These guys are having fun, and it's showing in our results because I think our team has run better in each meet that we've competed in this year," Hasleiet said.

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