The Oskaloosa cross country team competed in the Southeast Polk Invite Tuesday night and had a great start.

Sara Dickinson won the girls race in a time of 15:24 leading the girls to a seventh-place finish with 172 points in the 10-team field.

“Sara ran a great race and pretty much ran away from the field in the first mile,” Oskaloosa coach Keith Comfort said. “She has been running really great in workouts and she continues to improve. She will be a tough girl to beat this year.”

Freshman Brooke VanHouweling also had a nice race finishing in ninth place with a time of 17:22.

“Brooke ran a great race for her first cross country race,” Comfott said. “She was nervous, but settled down and ran a strong race to get into the top 10. Sara and Brooke will be a potent 1-2 punch for us this year.”

The Indians’ top five was rounded out by sophmores Jess Grahek, Lyric Morris and Dana VanRenterghem. All solid runners and ran well for Oskaloosa.

“This was a solid start for them. Paige Walter and Courtney Converse rounded out our varsity team tonight with good efforts. We had seven girls running their first cross country meet tonight and I was proud of how hard they ran and how well they finished. This team has good potential and it is exciting to get started.”

The boys team was led by John Andersen with a 33rd-place finish in a time of 18:46 in leading the Indians to a 10th-place finish in the 11-team field.

“John ran a strong race to get off to a good start in his senior season,” Comfort said. “He is very talented and as he gets more racing experience and gains confidence, I think we will see some really good things from John.”

Ryan McPherren came in 45th with a time of 19:46. “Ryan also had a good start to his season and he also can be a very strong runner as he gets in racing shape,” Comfort said.

Bryan Kunz, Shannon Koski and Max Holle rounded out the top 5 for the Indians tonight. “Bryan and Max are returners and Shannon is a new runner. These three are all capable of finishing even higher. They showed good potential tonight with their races,” Comfort said.

Rounding out the varsity seven were Martin Hassel, a foreign exchange student from Germany, and Jon Fash.

“We have a large team with a bunch of kids capable of beating each other on any given night,” Comfort said. “I thought the top seven looked good tonight, but I would expect to see several of our other runners pushing them to maintain those top seven spots. All our kids ran well for the first race and I couldn’t be prouder of them.”

The Indians hope they can improve on Tuesday night’s performance on Saturday when they run at Pella.