By Kyle Roberts

Ruston High’s cross country boys’ team had a great performance Saturday morning in the Benton Varsity Cross Country Invitational after placing first overall with 42 points and Thomas Rogers taking the top spot in the entire race.

“We went to Benton today with about half of our team,” Ruston head coach Dustin Cochran said. “We really wanted the young guys to have the opportunity to compete today. They’ve all been doing really well in practice the past couple of weeks so it was great for them to get to go out and put their new found fitness on display.”

Rogers ran a time of 15 minutes, 43.71 seconds. Liam Lowe placed fourth overall at 16:28.71, while Cole Magee took 10th with a time of 17:19.10.

Joshua Daulton followed at 11th at 17:26.71, while rounding out Ruston’s scorers was AJ Wilson at 16th with a time of 17:52.19.

“We got great runs from Wilson, Finley, Boudreaux, Tyler Roller in our 5-8 spots,” Cochran said. “All of them came away with PRs or big seasons bests. We’re so excited about the progress they continue to make and hopefully this success will jump start them and lead to even more success for everyone.”

Other runners for the Bearcats were Josiah Finley (18:20.02), Ben Boudreaux (19:17.84), Tyler Roller (19:32.18), Rylan Decoux (20:41.90) and Charlie Rufleth (24:39.73).

D’Arbonne Woods Charter took second at 57, while Benton placed third at 61.

“D’Arbonne Woods and Benton have really good varsity teams,” Cochran said. “We came out today with a lot of kids who aren’t usually scorers for us, but one way we will count on these guys. They took on newfound pressure this week and really delivered. They beat some well coached teams.”

Ruston returns to action next week for an out-of-state trip to Hot Springs, Ark., to run in the Lake Hamilton Invitational.