"Grueling" might be the best word to describe the week the Boscobel cross country teams had.
On Saturday, they took part in the Platteville Invitational, which featured elite competition and the setting of two new course records.
Then, on Tuesday, Boscobel hosted the 2nd Annual Ryan Zimpel Memorial Cross-Country Invitational, which features a course that can be tough on runners.
It's also the site of this year's sectionals competition.
Both the Bulldog girls and boys dominated Tuesday's event, coming in first with 20 and 26 points, respectively. Every Boscobel girls' runner finished in the top 10, even the ones whose scores didn't count.
"The girls did a very nice job of packing up and making surges and moves where they needed to," said Bulldogs coach Skyler Reynolds.
Keely Foley continued her breakout season by taking first place.
As for the boys, they placed five of their runners in the top 10 at Tuesday's event, with Ryan Mindham placing first in the event.
Foley and Ryan Mindham were leaders of the Boscobel pack.
Mindham paced the boys with a time of 17:43, while Foley raced to a 15:48 finish.
But, it was the total team performance - for both the girls and the boys - that had Reynolds raving.
Talking about the girls' performance, Reynolds said, "Each race we have someone new start to get closer and closer to the front pack. We are making good progress at becoming a deeper team (as in having 5,6,7,8 girls getting closer to our top 3 or 4 runners). The fifth, sixth and seventh runners are so important. Times are pretty irrelevant at a lot of meets compared to places. We placed where we needed to be."
Following Foley were Samantha Wilcox (17:29), Shelby Davis (17:39), Brady Borowski (17:50) and Nicole Kauffman (18:20). They placed third, fourth, fifth and seventh, respectively.
Not too far off the pace were Lachen Esters, who was ninth, and Autumn Moret, who placed 10th.
It was a similar story on the boys' side, with Logan Wacker (18:04) taking fourth, followed by Cameron Cashman (18:11), fifth; Eric Mindham (18:27), seventh; and Jon Frazier (18:46), ninth.
"It was great to see our guys pack up and race fast together," said Reynolds. "It just takes time for them to realize just how good they can actually be, and it's starting to happen."
Nate Boughton (19:12) and Zach Mindham (19:23) finished 14th and 15th for Boscobel.
Saturday's meet at Platteville was no cakewalk for Boscobel.
Even with Foley running a 15:25, she finished 10th overall, small schools and large schools combined. Platteville's Tricia Serres set a course record of 14:15 to take first in the girls' race.
"The competition at Platteville is very good," said Reynolds. "It's certainly getting to be the time of year that you start to run your best. The boys and girls finished strong in the competitive field of top division 2 and 3 teams."
With their 94 points in the small schools division, the Boscobel boys took third in the team standings behind Darlington (30) and Albany (82). Led by Ryan Mindham, who placed seventh among small school runners, Boscobel placed five competitors in the top 25.
Wacker finished 17th in a time of 17:47, while Eric Mindham (18:07) was 22nd, Cameron Cashman (18:08) was 23rd, and Jon Frazier (18:11) placed 25th.
For the girls, Foley's time was good enough for first place in the small schools division as the Bulldogs took second with 61 points. Darlington won the event with 44 points.
Going by the small schools division standings, Wilcox placed sixth (16:10), Davis was ninth (16:26), Borowski finished 19th (17:12), and Moret was 26th (17:47).
"Platteville is a great place to run," said Reynolds. "The course is challenging, yet the runners love to compete there."
On Saturday, Boscobel competes in the Riverdale Invite, with the SWAL championships slated for Thursday, Oct. 13, also at Riverdale.