Concord Athletic Department

For thousands of years, cross-country was based on a game called "Hares and Hounds," where a runner or Team would take off first and create a course as they went, leaving a trail (or clues) for others to follow. Then, at a certain point, others would take off trying to collect the clues and/or catch the leader. Team scores were established in a variety of ways, but in all cases by who completed the game the fastest. On Saturday we traveled to Kalamazoo to compete in a race where we started in reverse order based on your best time up to this point in the season. Ultimately, if everyone ran their exact season best time, all runners would cross the finish line at the same second. So this race setting creates a great opportunity for athletes to chase down a new fastest time ever, as they have people to race with late in the meet. With this setting, the Kalamazoo Hackett Invitational has a couple of special awards for both the male and female participants. One for most time dropped and another for most runners you pass. Well, our YellowJackets had Keaton Smith earn the Hound Award for boys as he passed 53 athletes, and Audrey Rinehart earned the Hound Award for girls as she passed 34 runners. Congratulations, Keaton and Audrey. In the final Team standings, the Concord Girls finished in third place out of the 6 schools competing, and the Concord boys rose to the challenge to earn the Championship Trophy! Congratulations to the following athletes who all ran their fastest time of the 2026 season. Audrey Rinehart by 59 seconds, Keaton Smith by 33 seconds, Liam Bauman by 23 seconds, Brandon Watkins by 9 seconds, and Kadin Shook by one tenth of a second. While she didn't earn the Hound award, congratulations to Haley Stimer, who, for girls, passed the second-most athletes as she passed 29 for a very impressive race. We now look forward to traveling to Springport on Tuesday for the next Big 8 Conference Jamboree. High School Boys start at 5:00 PM.