Forest Park Cross Country Festival This Saturday

This Saturday, thousands of cross country runners, their coaches, friends and family will descend upon Forest Park.

It will be the sixth running of the Forest Park Cross Country Festival, co-hosted by the Junior Billikens of Saint Louis U. High and Big River Running of St. Louis.

All events start and finish on the balloon race field on the eastern end of the park. The varsity races will be broadcast live on the Prep Broadcasting network. Click here to listen to the races.

Ladue-Frontenac will have all five of its schools in the field: St. Joseph’s Academy, Villa Duchesne, MICDS, John Burroughs and Ladue High School.

This is a good early season test for the local cross country runners.

In the girls field, the Angels of St. Joe look strong. Their top runner from a year ago, Krista Menghini, the Ladue-Frontenac Patch Female Athlete for the fall has graduated and moved onto SIU-Carbondale. The Angels second best runner transferred but the team returns runners 3-7 from last season.

The MICDS boys will be led by senior Amos Bartlesmeyer who played soccer a year ago. He ran a 4:16 mile last year, establishing him as one of the strongest runners in the area.

The Ladue girls team will be mostly new. They graduated Jocelyn Todd who was the Rams’ star in cross country and track and is now at the University of Iowa.

The morning activities begin with an open race for all comers at 7:30 a.m.
Then the junior varsity teams take over the course with boys races at 8:10 and 8:45 a.m.followed by girls at 9:20 and 9:55 a.m. The first of four boys varsity races begin at 10:30 a.m. and the last varsity race is 12:05 p.m., followed by middle school aces for boys at 1:25 p.m. and girls at 1:40 p.m.

Divisions have not been created by size of school. Rather, schools make a choice if they want to be in the more competitive division or not.

This meet ranks as one of the best promoted and most competitive events in the Midwest. Rockhurst will represent the Kansas City area. Teams will be coming from as far away as Oak Ridge, TN, Branson, Poplar Bluff,Columbia and Jefferson City, MO.

The website for the race is Big Riverrunning.com.