IPSWICH – While a pair of Northwestern runners took all of the suspense out of the individual races, the chase for the team titles was a different story at the Lake Region Conference cross country meet on Wednesday afternoon.

Frederick won the girls’ team crown by six points over Ipswich, while Northwestern edged Frederick on the strength of a pusher for the boys’ championship at Split Rock Country Club in Ipswich.

Northwestern’s Ella Boekelheide won the girls’ race and Lincoln Woodring captured the boys’ race.

Boekelheide is the defending Class B state champion. The conference title was her third in a row, but still meaningful.

“There’s definitely some fast people here at conference,” Boekelheide said, “and I take much joy in winning a meet like this.”

Boekelheide, usually a front runner, had a little company in the early part of the race when Warner’s Kennedee Wiedebush got off to a fast start. However, that did not phase Boekelheide.

“You can’t really think too much about it at the beginning. You just have to trust the process and I knew my plan,” Boekelheide said. “It’s OK if someone’s beside me and we’re not even a half a mile in. I just trusted myself.”

It was a just a matter of time before Boekelheide pulled away. The freshman won the race by nearly 40 seconds.

While Frederick’s Morgan Sumption has grown accustomed to running behind Boekelheide, the junior was focused more on her team on Wednesday.

“This is the third year in a row where she got first and I got second at conference,” Sumption said. ” I love watching her run and I always make sure to keep her in my sights, but I know just how strong she is.”

Sumption also ran a strong race and helped lead the Titans to the team title for the second straight season.

“Last year was our first year winning conference in a while and so we just wanted to come back strong and do it again,” Sumption said. “We knew we could, but we just had to push ourselves.”

Woodring led from start to finish to win the boys’ race. The junior finished third in the conference last season as Faulkton’s Hunter Niederbaumer won the title.

“It’s for sure motivation just to try to be as good as he was. He was a great runner,” Woodring said. “That really helped motivate me, but it’s just trying to improve every year, trying to get better every year. The goal is to ultimately win a state championship.”

Woodring said he found out recently he actually runs better if he goes out a bit slower than faster, but settled on a happy medium during the LRC.

“Today I thought I’d try a mixture of the two, go out a little harder and it worked out for me so I may have to keep trying it,” Woodring said.

The Wildcats needed a big effort from Woodring and his other teammates to secure the team title. Northwestern and Frederick both finished with 12 points and the Wildcats were awarded the championship on the basis of their fourth runner (pusher).

“It feels great, especially since our whole team worked together to pull this off with our pusher, especially,” said Northwestern’s Nathan Melius who finished runner-up in the race. “We’ve just been pushing each other throughout practice and we’ve been training for conference and regions and state, these next three big races and it feels great to pull it off.”

Frederick runners claimed the third, fourth and fifth spots, while Ipswich runners took sixth, seventh and eighth. Northwestern had runners that finished ninth and 11th to pull out the team win.

The Aberdeen Christian girls ran in a pack on the way to fourth-place finish in team points.

Grace Steger was ninth, Kathryn Steger was 10th and Rachel Beaner was 12th.

“I thought they did a really good job. They ran in a pack. They stuck together,” said Knights coach Olivia Inches. “They all ran really good times for what they’ve been running this season.”

Inches said her runners ran with a bit of a different mindset in the conference meet compared to other regular-season events.

“At conference it’s a little different than other races, because you want to try and place for your team so every point counts,” Inches said. “So the whole time I was just telling them, get the next shirt in front of you.”

All of the teams in the LRC will head to the Region 1B meet next Wednesday in Webster.

To see complete meet results, click on the following link:

https://www.athletic.net/CrossCountry/meet/216789/results/all