Viking girls crush Wisconsin schools

In their travels to find different and unique courses, the North Branch cross country team found itself out-of-state last week in St. Croix Falls, WI. “We conquered what was a somewhat confusing race course,” Head Coach Anna Geary said. She followed that up by quipping, “And we managed to not lose anyone in the process!” The boys were the first on the course and senior Zach Peno was the first Viking to cross the finish line. He managed to make the medal stand by finishing in ninth place in a time of 18:17. Kyle Crowell and Ean Charpentier finished back-to-back in 16th and 17th place, respectively. Crowell came across the checkered line in 18:48 while Charpentier crossed in 18:52. Junior Kyle Granger and senior Jake Petrik weren’t far behind either one. Granger finished in 19:02 in 20th place and Petrik finished in 19:07 in 22nd place. Scott Ramberg, a freshmen, finished just out of scoring contention for North Branch with a time of 19:08. The Vikings finished with 84 points, which was good enough for third place. Grantsburg won the invite with a total of 46 points. The co-op of Unity/Luck (WI) just edged out North Branch for second place with 80 points. Girls Rhianna Rinke continued to absolutely blow away the competition in the smaller meets she participates in. The eighth grader dominated the St. Croix Invite with a time of 15:17. The second place finisher in the race was her teammate Casey Hovland, who came in at 16:33. Junior Haley Huset finished in fourth place with a time of 16:56 and junior Cassidy White came in ninth place with a time of 17:38. Claire Schraufnagel, a sophomore, finished out the varsity scoring for North Branch with an 18:03 in 15th place. The Vikings ran away with the team title, scoring 30 points. The next closest team was Amery (WI) with 45 points. “A big congrats to the girls who medaled,” Geary said after the meet. Those included Rinke, Hovland, Huset and White.