NATCHITOCHES – St. Charles Catholic senior Robbie Ocmond capped off a strong final year of cross country running by taking 29th overall at the class 3A state meet held here this week.

Ocmond turned in a time of 18:31 in the three mile race, after finishing second at the district meet to qualify for state.

The St. Charles boys teams had an outstanding showing with 10th in the field of 22 teams, easily beating last year’s 17th place finish.

“I think even the kids were surprised by how well they did,” coach Melanie Punch said. “Overall it was a great improvement for us, especially when you consider the number of young, first year runners we had.”

Ocmond is the only senior on a team that only figures to get much better by next year.

“I was hoping for a time of 18 minutes, but the hills were tough, especially one of them in particular,” he said. “I was hoping for a top 20 finish so it would have been nice to do a little better since this was the end of my cross country running.”

Of the six other runners in the meet for the Comets, three of them were in their first year running with the team.

Steven Bordelon returned to the squad after a year layoff and took 61st overall in the field with a time of 19:37, then Kenny McCoy was 64th in 19:46.

Rounding out the St. Charles finishers was D.J. Gendron with a time of 20:20, Jeremy Wise in 22 minutes flat, Lucas Roussel in 22:09 and Daniel Bergeron in 22:33.

Chantelle Calmes led the Lady Comet runners as she had a time of 29:45, while Melissa Newman finished in 30:18 as a first year runner. The Lady Comets did not have enough runners to qualify in the team competition.