Indian Creek had itself a day at the Franklin Regional on Saturday morning.
The Braves won their first-ever team championship in the boys meet, outpointing Center Grove 75 to 96 to claim the trophy. On the girls side, freshman Libby Dowty continued her outstanding season with a dominating first-place performance in the girls race, helping her team place third to join the boys at the Shelbyville Semistate this coming weekend.
Lucas Neibert paced the Creek boys and was the top local boys finisher overall, hitting the finish line third in a personal-best 16 minutes, 30.7 seconds. The Braves also got top-20 finishes from Noah Greenwood (11th, 17:04.4) and Jackson Neibert (16th, 17:15.5).
Dowty ran the course in 18:22.5, winning the girls race by nearly 26 seconds; Abby Fleetwood finished fifth in 19:19.9 for Indian Creek.
Center Grove and Franklin also advanced both their boys and girls teams to semistate.
The Trojans finished second in the boys meet despite sitting all of their top runners, while the girls were fifth. Cameron Cox (ninth, 16:49.6) was the top Center Grove finisher on the boys side, while Jacob Ellis and Rylan Mullins were 17th and 18th, respectively; Chloe Farmer (16th) and Lilly Brunsman (17th) led the way for the girls.
For the Grizzly Cub girls, who landed fourth in the team standings, Lauren Klem (19:11.4) was fourth individually, followed by Hannah Lindsay (18th) and Ava Ott (20th). The boys were also fourth, led by Ty Murphy (sixth, 16:45.9), Ari Smith (eighth, 16:48.0) and Isiah Tunis (19th).
Several other local individuals kept their seasons alive.
On the girls side, Whiteland’s Victoria Jackson (third, 18:51.6) will be joined by teammates Isabella Fuentes (15th) and Addyson Griffis (36th). Greenwood also has three runners going to semistate: Lilly Rollings (eighth, 19:45.1), Ryann Marker (12th, 19:55.2) and Makena Cruse (28th).
In the boys meet, the Warriors’ Matthew Nino moved on with a fourth-place showing (16:36.1) and the Woodmen advanced a pair of runners in Samuel Grimes (fifth, 16:44.4) and John Gries (28th).
