By FRED CONLEY
T-H Sports Editor
The Forrest City Lady Mustang cross country team ran as a "pack" Monday at the AAAAA-East Conference Meet held at Cabot's Rolling Hills Country Club.
The result was a fifth-place finish for the girls' team on the 2.5 mile course. A year ago, the Forrest City girls finished fourth at the meet, which was being held for only the second time.
Monday, Coach Lewis Etheridge sent four freshmen -- Randi Gibson, Keri Shepherd, Alyssa Aldridge and Melanie Cook -- onto the course with three-year veteran Krystal Long, a junior.
"I'll take fifth," Etheridge said. "Not bad for four ninth graders and a junior."
Thomas Broussard, a sophomore running cross country for the first time, finished 23rd overall and was the only entry into the boys' three-mile race for Forrest City.
All five Forrest City girls and Broussard will compete at the Class AAAAA State Meet to be held Saturday, Nov. 8, at Oaklawn Park in Hot Springs.
At Hot Springs, the boys will run at 10:30 a.m., while the girls will run at 11 a.m.
In cross country, it takes five people to make a complete team but runners can participate as individual entries.
Like golf, the lowest individual scores (finish placement) become the winning scores after each individual place finish is added together. The perfect score would be 15 points, or a 1-2-3-4-5 finish.
Cabot, after a second-place finish a year ago, won the conference title Monday, while Jonesboro ran second. Searcy ran third while Mountain Home, the defending girls' champion, ran fourth.
Individually for Forrest City, Long set the pace, finishing in a time of 23:09 while Cook ran second in a time of 23:15. Aldridge was third, crossing the finish line in a time of 23:50 while Gibson's time was 24:30 for fourth and Shepherd was fifth in 30:31.