Cross Country

Another year, another group of superb performances by area student-athletes, the most outstanding of which are being recognized. On Wednesday, 55 individuals were announced as fall sport finalists for the 2018 Semoball Awards. The selections were presented during a live radio show on SEMO ESPN Radio...

Instagram handle: @caleb.XC Favorite place to run: LaCroix Trail Favorite song to run to: "Believe" by Imagine Dragons Favorite memory of the season: Being able to go to state with my team Favorite pre-race food: Peanut butter and jelly Favorite pre-race pep talk: "It's only around 16:00 minutes of pain"...

Kennedy Bauer always loved to run. She started running competitively in kindergarten with the Jackson Youth Track Club and quickly latched onto the shorter distances. She expanded her repertoire beyond sprints, and in the third or fourth grade, she traveled to Hershey, Pennsylvania, as a long jumper in a national competition. But as a youngster, that love didn't extend to long-distance races...

Months before the 2017 cross country season began, Caleb Cornelius had his sights set on the Class 2 state championship. Cornelius, coming off a 10th-place finish as a sophomore, saw the times the top runners had posted and realized they were similar to the mark he wanted to reach...

Saxony Lutheran's Caleb Cornelius capped off his stellar junior cross country season with a Class 2 state championship. Cornelius finished first in 16 minutes, 22.55 seconds to be crowned the Class 2 boys individual state champion at the Oak Hills Golf Course in Jefferson City, Missouri...

The Jackson girls cross country team had three of its runners finish in the top 10 as the host Indians took second place in the team standings at Saturday's Class 4 District 1 meet at the Jackson City Park. Junior Kennedy Bauer was the second runner to cross the finish line in 20 minutes, 1.68 seconds to lead Jackson. ...

By day, Luke Beevor is the cross country coach at Cape Girardeau Central High School. The rest of the time, he's a televised running star. At least, that's what he's telling his Tigers this week. On Sunday, Beevor took on the Chicago Marathon -- one of the six World Marathon Majors, along with Boston, London, Berlin and New York -- and as the television cameras focused in on the elites of marathon running, Beevor stole a little bit of screen time...

The host Notre Dame cross country teams captured the team championships in both the girls and boys division of the Notre Dame Invitational. Blake Morris was the first runner to cross the finish line with a time of 16 minutes, 25.41 seconds to lead the Bulldogs to victory. On the girls' side, Alaina Baumgart placed first with a time of 20 minutes, 12.53 seconds...

OAK RIDGE, Mo. -- For Michael Brown, it was all a whirlwind. One day, his 4-year-old son, Nolan, was taking a bath when his wife Elizabeth noticed a hard spot on his stomach. A couple of days later, they learned Nolan had kidney cancer and they were driving to St. Louis, Missouri, for surgery...

The Jackson boys soccer team got a first-half goal and held on the rest of the way to grab a 1-0 victory over host Notre Dame in the championship of the Notre Dame Soccer Fest on Saturday evening in Cape Girardeau. It was the second year in a row the Indians (5-0) claimed the event title, and in the process handed the Bulldogs (4-1) their first loss of the year...

Thanks to two second-place finishes, St. Vincent cross country won both the boys and girls team titles in the largest-ever St. Vincent Invitational at Perry Park Center in Perryville, Missouri, on Wednesday. On the boys side, Joseph Baer came in second with a time of 18 minutes, 5 seconds, as the Indians finished 13 points ahead of second-place Steeleville (Ill.). Corin Carroll was second in the girls race, and St. Vincent edged Valle Catholic and Poplar Bluff by five points...

Saxony Lutheran junior Caleb Cornelius offered up a standout performance as he finished fourth in a field of more than 400 cross country runners at the First to the Finish Kickoff Classic on Saturday in Edwardsville, Illinois. Cornelius ran a 16:40.20 to garner a top-five result, just 11 seconds off the winner, Jackson Stewart of Decatur St. Teresa...

It was like stalking prey. Cape Girardeau Central's Jared Neikirk positioned himself, held his spot and pounced when he saw the opening. At the end, Neikirk got a quality win early in the cross country season as he passed and pulled away from a pair of Jackson runners -- reigning Semoball Awards Boys Cross Country Runner of the Year Ean Buffington and Gage Kinder -- to win the boys senior race at the 23rd Annual Jackson Invitational on Saturday at Jackson City Park...

The Semoball Cup ended up being a battle of the Bulldogs that needed overtime to decide. Megan Heisserer's golden goal to lift Notre Dame to the Class 2 soccer title also happened to clinch the Cup. In the closest finish in the early history of the award, Notre Dame edged Van Buren by 4.79 points in the standings that determine which area school had the most athletically successful school year...

From across Southeast Missouri, people descended upon Cape Girardeau on Saturday night for the region's premier sports awards show. More than 150 student-athletes from 57 area high schools were on hand for the Fourth Annual Semoball Awards presented by SoutheastHEALTH at the Donald C. Bedell Performance Hall on Southeast Missouri State University's River Campus, as awards were handed out in 25 sports categories...