CLINTON — The goal was not to earn a state title, just to have a solid day.

The Lafayette High cross-country team accomplished that during the MHSAA Class 4A state championships at Mississippi College Choctaw Trails on Tuesday afternoon.

The Lady Commodores earned a top-10 place, finishing in ninth place with 264 points, ahead of Cleveland (307) and behind East Central (246).

“We ran as well as we could run today, it was just kind of a down year,” Lafayette coach Ben Mikell said. “We came here, we ran as hard as we could. Not a lot to write home about, but we got a lot of kids coming back. No disappointments.”

Sophomore Julianna Mikell was the top finisher for Lafayette with a time of 23 minutes, 29 seconds, good enough for 20th place.

Eighth-grader Aliana Quarles followed Mikell with a 37th-place finish and a time of 25:08. Seventh-grader Sara Giray was close behind, finishing seven seconds slower for a 39th-place finish.

Sophomore Alex Long finished 89th with a time of 28:18 while juniors Anja Diercks and Abby Davis finished 101st and 108th, respectively.

The Lady Commodores return all of their runners next year, which is a positive to be taken away from this year’s performance knowing they can improve upon it with more experience next season.

“Our two eighth-graders had pretty good races today,” Mikell said. “Julianna had a good solid race, it just wasn’t good enough to make All-State.”
The top 14 runners earn All-State honors with Mikell missing out by six positions.

‘Dores earn top-20 finish
With one senior on the team and the next oldest runners being sophomores, the expectations were low but modest for the Commodores, who finished 18th with 428 points.

Freshman Andreas Diercks was the top finisher for Lafayette with a time of 19:59, good enough for 47th place.

Fellow freshman and Adreas’ brother, Alex Diercks, came in 58th place, running a time of 20:11.

Eighth-grader Quin Roush and sophomore Devin Satterwhite were the next two to place for the Commodores, coming in 64th and 129th place, respectively.

Quin’s brother, Foster Roush, came in 135th while eighth-grader William Smith placed 151st with times of 23:04 and 24:08, respectively.

Senior Brelynn Hudgins came in 172nd with a time of 26:55 to round out the Lafayette runnners.

“Our guys, all our top finishers were ninth-graders with the Diercks twins, then our next two were eight-grader and a sophomore. We’re young,” Mikell said. “It just depends on if they all come back out and run and take this as a starting point. You don’t know with kids how they are going to take how they do as a challenge and improve on it or say I’m going to try another sport. It just depends.”