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Pella and Knoxville’s cross country teams joined the majority of the Little Hawkeye Conference at the 44th Cardinal Invitational Tuesday.

The challenging course at Woodward Golf Club tested the No. 3 Pella boys and Lady Dutch runners, who placed 3rd and 2nd respectively as teams.

Knoxville’s Norah Pearson placed 2nd in the field in the girls race, finishing seven seconds behind Norwalk’s Breelie Mauro. The Panther sophomore had a time of 20:30.4 in a challenge as she returns from early season injury. Knoxville’s girls placed 5th, with Natalie Collins playing 27th and Olivia Maasdam placing 28th.

The Lady Dutch were fueled by their fast freshmen with their second place team score. Autumn Blink paced Pella in 4th place (22:16.7), followed by less than a second in 5th place from Macy Schroeder (22:17.2).

Coming off of a two week layoff, Pella’s boys had to contend with No. 1 Dallas Center-Grimes, who took gold as a team, and runner-up and No. 14 ranked in 4A Norwalk. It was the first time the Dutch have seen the defending 3A champions in person.

Individually for Pella, Josiah Wittenberg placed 5th (17:25.5), followed by a 10th place finish for Tony Schmitz (17:47.7) and 13th for Nathan Vander Waal (17:58.1).

Knoxville placed 6th among the challenging field of teams in the boys race, led by a 14th place finish from Seth Walraven (18:06.8), 24th from Max Purvis (19:27), and 30th from Carson Irving (20:05).

Find full results from the 44th Annual Newton Cardinals’ Invitational at below. Pella and Knoxville both return to action on September 29th when the Panthers host their annual meet.

Boys meet: http://onlineraceresults.com/race/view_plain_text.php?race_id=72135
Girls meet: http://onlineraceresults.com/race/view_plain_text.php?race_id=72134

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