As they have done in almost every race they entered this season, senior Taylor Hickey and junior Stacey Swatek paced the field in the four kilometer varsity girls event, charging out of their right hand gate across a 100-meter field, to get the ‘hole shot’ when the field narrowed and never looking back.

Despite a glitch that saw the pair briefly going the wrong way around a flag, they quickly adjusting on a course that was extremely fan friendly in the sense runners were visible nearly 100 percent of the time, but seemed difficult to follow with a number of times around different loops.

Hickey, who already owned the course record, having set it at a Quadrangular meet earlier this season, topped the field with a time of 16 minutes, 22 seconds. Swatek grabbed the conference runners up spot in 16:56

Senior Jessica Sweet ran the race of her life – so far – crossing the line fourth overall and flirting with a third place finish for much of the race before surrendering the spot with a fight later and settling for fourth in 17:33.

She was clearly happy with her finish and head coach Dean Knetter who was pretty much bang on with a pre-race prediction a week ago, was pleasantly surprised to see her running way up the field as well.

"I was a little surprised on Jessica Sweet who normally runs fifth (in the Dells group) for us. She ran third," said Knetter afterward. "She finished fourth in the race, which was a surprise, but three-four-five were right where I thought they would be and you know, one-two haven’t lost a step.

"I thought we were a little rusty with a week off, you know. Times were off a bit, but there were a lot of corners, lot of turns, which slow times down."

For Sweet, she finished well in front of her quad pace and enjoyed an awesome race.

"It was at least a minute faster than my Quad time," said Sweet afterward. "I felt a lot faster, a lot stronger than I did previously."

For much of the race, it appeared the Chiefs were on their way to a 1-2-3 finish. Emily Girdauskas of Wautoma slipped by Sweet late in the race, but it didn’t change an awesome run.

"At the end, I was kind of tired. When the Wautoma girl passed me, I was really mad she passed me. I tried to get her again and I just couldn’t do it," said Sweet with a chuckle.

Sweet said she thinks she and the rest of the Dells runners did not peak and will bring back something special for the Sectionals when the team will be in the hunt to qualify for one of only two spots available at the state championship meet.

"We’re hoping this year we’ll push through," said Sweet.

The Chiefs wrapped up

an amazing 27-point first place finish with Theresa Madland finishing ninth in 18:15 and Kiersten Norgard 11th just two seconds later.

Tesa Barney passed four in the final 400 meters of the race for a 20th place showing in 19:19 and Abby Vanden Langenberg wrapped up a sub-20-minute showing for the entire team, crossing the line 28th in 19:48.