Festus senior Carson Driemeier has one more high school cross country race to run.
Driemeier will defend his individual state championship and be joined by his Tiger teammates at Gans Creek in Columbia on Friday for the Class 4 state championships after he broke the 3.1-mile (5K) course record at the Splash Family Aquatic Center in Cape Girardeau with a time of 15:12.89 to win the District 1 race on Nov. 1.
Festus edged Webster Groves High by one point, 50 to 51. The top two teams from each district qualify for state.
Defending state champion West Plains High won District 2 and has won a record 14 state titles. Herculaneum High (13) and Festus (11) are next in line. The Tigers were second in 2024 and won eight consecutive state crowns from 2014 to 2021. Retired Zizzers head coach Joe Bill Dixon (13 state titles) and Festus head coach Bryant Wright (11 boys, two with the Festus girls) have been allies and competitors for two-plus decades. Wright takes the Tigers to Dixon’s running camp in the wilds of southwest Missouri each summer. The closeness of the programs evaporates once the gun sounds and a race begins.
“This is a group of guys I felt like if they worked hard, we might be able to do some big things,” Wright said of this year’s crew.
With individual and team state titles and the last three Jefferson County Activities Association championships to his credit, there’s only one more thing for Driemeier to accomplish, and that’s to become the Tigers first two-time individual state winner.
“He smashed the course record and he looked really good,” Wright said. “A win is a big thing, but the way he won, some people win big time and he looked nice and smooth and didn’t have to go to the well. He’s very fit right now.”
Last season, 2025 grad Tate Uding was Driemeier’s second in command, but this season that role has shifted from week to week. Webster Groves had the top 1-5 split (51 seconds) of any of the 12 teams in the district. The Festus split was 1:57. The second Tiger to finish was sophomore Grant Fink in sixth in 16:06.77. The district title came down to Festus sophomore Hudson Bates out -leaning Statesman junior Edward Norton by one-hundredth of a second (16:22.67-16:22.68) to finish seventh. It was a PR for Bates.
Junior Chris Courtois was 15th in 16:43.68 and junior Chase Buechting was 21st in 17:10.24 for the other two Festus scoring times. Sophomore Matthew Collier (26th, 17:24.91) and sophomore Lucas DeClue (32nd, 18:11.62) ran 6-7 for the Tigers.
“Courtois had a special race, he had a large PR,” Wright said. “Hopefully, the state race will be his best race of the season and not districts.”
De Soto High was third in the district standings with 80 points, qualifying for state as a team. Four Dragons fit into the top 30 at districts: Cruz Anders (third, 15:54.19), senior Carson Koerber (fifth, 16:03.12), junior Jake Schuenemeyer (19th, 17:04.64) and junior Clayton Rozycki (22nd, 17:13.14). Koerber is a two-time state medalist. Gavin Koerber, Carson's twin brother, Brycen Stopp and Sullivan Pinkley are also running at state for De Soto.
Sophomore James Schlarman (23rd, 17:15.09) is the first Windsor High runner to qualify for state since Nick Daugherty in 2022.
In the District 1 girls competition in Cape, it was also Festus and Webster Groves jockeying for the top spot, but this time the Tigers had a little more breathing room winning, 29-49. The top seven finishers were from the two state qualifiers and Statesmen junior Carson Selby was the only runner under 19:00 with a first-place time of 18:54.50. Festus junior Lucy Boyer was second in 19:24.13. Selby has closed the gap on Boyer considerably, considering Boyer was third in the state and Selby was 19th last year.
Tigers head coach Wes Armbruster is gunning for his second straight state title and third in a calendar year after guiding Boyer and the rest of the school’s track and field team to the state crown in May. He understands the function of districts is to position his team for another state run.
“We’re not going to the well a week before state to win the district and I left that in Lucy’s hands,” Armbruster said. “She’s been in big races before. She’s had a lot of big races in track. She’s a gamer. The bigger the meet, the more she shines. There’s bigger fish to fry. We wanted to be solid this weekend and we were, and we have our eyes on Friday.”
Boyer and senior Katelyn Thurman (fourth, 19:45.95), junior Bailee Tolbert (sixth, 20:03.83), senior Olivia Cole (seventh, 20:07.30) and freshman Kyndall Gildea (10th, 20:33.93) had a split of 1:09. Sophomore Marisa Peter (11th, 20:38.54) and junior Kendall Counts (13th, 20:50.72) were 6-7 for Festus.
Other JCAA teams from the county with state qualifiers are De Soto (sophomore Gracie Maijala, 22nd, 21:49.67), Hillsboro (sophomore Lyla Wright, 19th, 21:33.02; freshman Hayleigh Churchill, 23rd, 21:50.05) and Windsor (sophomore McKenzie Robbins, 21st, 21:48.91; freshman Jordan Lessard, 28th, 21:57.82).
Class 5
The Fox High, Northwest High and Seckman High boys and girls teams competed in Class 5 District 1 on the same course and the same day as Class 4, but the larger schools in the county weren’t quite as successful. In fact, the boys from the Warriors and Jaguars were shut out of the state meet on Friday for the second year in a row.
On the girls side, Fox freshman Sienna Harger continued her breakout season with a state-qualifying 11th-place finish in 19:19.26. Seckman sophomore Grace Andrews qualified for state a second time after finishing 16th in 19:34.84. Junior Rose Nicholls (20th, 19:50.70) qualified for state for the Lions for a third time and she’ll be joined by freshman teammate Marlena Watkins (27th, 20:02.87).