ST. JAMES -- The Mountain lake/Butterfield-Odin varsity girls' cross country team seems to have an aversion to odd numbers.
However, at its meet in St. James on Tuesday the team was able to embrace the most important odd number, finishing first in the team competition.
The result was sparked by great runs by the team's top three runners, who ran close together and each placed in the top six in the race.
Lydia Hildebrandt finished second in 16:36, Stacey Harder finished fourth in 16:42 and Karina Fast finished sixth in 17:15.
Head coach Mike Nelson noted that running as a pack has allowed the three to feed off of each other's energy while racing to achieve better results.
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"They all do better because of that verses just being one person out there by themselves," Nelson said. "What we're trying to work on with the rest of the team is to bring the rest of them up with them."
Brooke Fast and Brianna Southivong were the other scoring runners for ML/B-O, finishing in 15th and 16th place, respectively.
The team graduated four seniors last year, and Brooke Fast and Southivong are in the process of improving to bring the Wolverines' lead pack back up to five runners.
"Last year we had a really good pack of five that got us to state, and we ended up third in state with that pack," Nelson said. "We have the makings of that again, and now it's just about moving some others along and hopefully getting them closer for the big meets."
The Wolverines' team score of 43 bested second place finisher Madelia/Truman's team score of 61 and third place finisher St. James' team score of 67.
"Even the race director said it's the tightest group that they've had there in a while instead of just one team blowing it out, so it was good competition," Nelson said.
The win was the team's second in a row after it won last week in Windom.
In the boys' varsity race, ML/B-O finished fourth in the team competition with 107 points, paced by a sixth place finish by Kyle Blomgren in a time of 18:16.
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Cory Fast was next for the Wolverines in 21st place in a time of 20:13, followed quickly by Daniel Nelson in 23rd with a time of 20:15.
The team scoring was rounded out by Nathan Dukes, who finished 29th in a time of 20:46, and Austin Watkins, who finished 32nd in a time of 21:18.
St. James won the boys' varsity team competition with 45 points, narrowly beating M/T, who had 48 points. Minnesota Valley Lutheran was third with 88 points.
The Wolverines next grind their teeth on Saturday in Duluth at the Swain Invitational, one of the biggest meets in the state, with around 45 teams in the class A division alone.
