POCAHONTAS — Travis Nuss had a good feeling coming into the Twin Lakes Conference meet this past Saturday morning.

During an invitational held at Ida Grove recently, Southeast Valley finished as the top team from the TLC. That gave Nuss the added confidence that his Jaguars could do it again when it mattered the most.

And that is exactly what they did.

The Jaguars had all five counting runners place in the Top-20 to best Manson Northwest Webster by two points and Sioux Central by three in an incredibly tight team race. Southeast Valley finished with 63 points, the Cougars had 65 and the Rebels 66.

Pocahontas Area was fourth followed by Emmetsburg, South Central Calhoun, East Sac County, Alta-Aurelia and GT-RA. The meet was held at the Pocahontas Golf Club.

Trey Engelmann from Alta-Aurelia was the individual winner with Manson NW’s Lane Moline and Quinn Lachelt right behind. Cooper Nuss led the Jaguars with a fourth place showing.

“Coming into the meet, we knew it was going to be an exciting, close race,” Nuss said. “We knew we had a chance to win it after being the top conference team at Ida Grove. We’ve talked all year about how important every runner on the team is and (Saturday) it really showed.”

Nuss, a sophomore, clocked a time of 18:27 with teammate and freshman Oscar Hanson placing seventh in 18:46. Zach Thompson was 16th overall, Asa Haub 17th and Carson Suchan finished 19th. All three are juniors for Southeast Valley.

“If any one of our runners doesn’t catch that one more runner or fight off the runner behind them, we end up second or third overall,” Nuss said. “Something about three weeks ago really clicked with this group of boys and we’ve been steadily improving in the team standings the last four meets compared to earlier in the season.

“I’m proud of all of our athletes this year as it hasn’t been a normal year in many different ways. But they stuck with it, adapted and kept working to improve, and it paid off (Saturday).”

Along with silver and bronze for Moline and Lachelt, Thade Lachelt was sixth for Manson Northwest Webster.

Emmetsburg’s Cade Jacobson cracked the Top-10 with a ninth place finish and Pocahontas Area’s Joseph Ricke was 11th overall.