<p>For the Daily Journal</p><p>TERRE HAUTE</p><p>It had been 11 years since the Franklin boys cross country team ran in a state finals meet. On Saturday, the Grizzly Cubs ran to an 11th-place state finish at the LaVern Gibson Championship Cross Country Course.</p><p>Franklin finished with 310 points. Carmel won the team race with a 136.</p>[sc:text-divider text-divider-title="Story continues below gallery" ]Click here to purchase photos from this gallery<p>“Ultimately, we kind of peaked around semistate and it was hard to tell with (Saturday’s) course being soft but they responded well to training this season,” Franklin cross country coach Adam Schwartz said.</p><p>“We have six guys that haven’t raced the course before and that makes it tough. It’s not an extremely difficult course, but one you need to have experience on to run well. With the conditions being soft, it was hard.</p><p>“I’m not going to say that we ran bad by any means but you can see that some teams were definitely more experienced on the course than we were.”</p><p>Roncalli’s Nick Perkins, competing as an individual, hit the line in 16:01.8 to finish 10th overall and earn All-State honors. Whiteland sophomore Will Jefferson ran to an 85th-place finish (16:59.1) in his first state finals appearance.</p><p>“It was definitely very fun to be able to get here but I didn’t have a good race at all, so it was a bummer,” Jefferson said. “I wanted to get here and I got here, but I did not race as well as I thought I was going to race.”</p><p>Andrew Bixler was the top runner for Franklin, finishing in 39th place overall with a time of 16:32.3. Wyatt McCullough was just behind him in 43rd in 16:34.4, while William Tucker (17:09) was 108th, Ethan Pheifer (17:11.6) was 114th and Isaiah Lindsay (17:25.9) was 139th to round out the Grizzly Cubs scoring.</p><p>Anthony McDonald was 163rd for Franklin in 17:45.3 and Andrew Hargis was 183rd in 18:12.7.</p><p>“I’m proud of this team. At the end of the season, we didn’t have the best times but achieved more than we think we did,” said Bixler, who is a senior. “We’re proud of what we did and we’re happy because this is the first time in 11 years for Franklin to go to state.”</p><p>Bixler said that he still wants to run collegiately and has looked at many options, including Butler and the University of Indianapolis.</p><p>“They all have good cross country teams and have a good program of what I want to study,” Bixler said.</p>