The Kimball High boys captured their fourth consecutive Western Trails Conference Cross Country title at Gordon on Friday and the girls tied for first with the Morrill Lady Lions, but had to settle for runner up after a tie breaker format determined the outcome. The Kimball boys had their top five runners all place in the top ten medal group with seniors Shawn Nagel and Lyle Janicek involved in all four conference championships and both were top ten finishers all four years! Kimball won with a total of 14 points thanks to placing five in the top ten individual list. GordonRushville was runner up with 27 points and Mitchell was third with 53. Shawn Nagel was Kimball’s top runner earning third place individual honors with his time of 18:46, Daniel Evertson ran 4th in 18:58, Sean Ganskow 5th in 19:20, Lyle Janicek 7th in 19:48, and Robert Eby 10th in 20:05. Spencer Luppen was 14th in 20:37. Kimball and Morrill both tallied 29 points in the girl’s final team standings with Morrill awarded the conference crown by virtue of the tie breaker system. Mitchell had 35, Bridgeport 68, and Bayard 75. Kimball senior Kayli Rageth was the individual conference champion in the girl’s race with a time of 17:11. Freshman Hailey Keller joined Rageth in the top ten medal group with an 8th place finish and a time of 18:16. Kaitlin Moritz ran 12th in 18:56, Sadie Sullivan 14th in 19:24, Megan Woods 18th in 19:51, and Dalton Luppen 34th in 26:10. The Kimball girls and boys were hampered as they had runners who were battling the flu and Jordain Gawith had to miss the conference meet because of illness. It was an exciting finish to the regular season and a great warm up for today’s (Thursday) District meet at Grant. Race time at the Grant golf course is 3 p.m. for the girl’s race to be followed by the boys. The district meet is the state qualifying meet with the top three teams advancing along with the top 15 individuals. Both the Kimball girls and boys have a good chance of qualifying but they will have to run to their top potential to get the job done. Kimball also had four boys run “just for the fun of it”, according to coach Tiffany Culek. Patrick Dillon ran 20:58, Kyle Gorsuch 22:45, Brian Evertson 23:17, and Caleb Bonnell 27:41. “These runners were not in contention for any honors as the conference meet is only for varsity scoring, but they ran anyway and I appreciate that,” coach Culek said. Culek also said the weather at Gordon was cold ... real cold. “We had kids running in that cold who had been sick all week. We were without Jordain (Gawith) who was home sick. Despite some of our runners not feeling up to par and despite the cold, our boys and girls both ran well. I feel if we had been completely healthy our girls would’ve won the team title too. I was proud of all of our runners,” Culek said.