This season, the Centralia boys and girls have consistently finished within the top four at meets.

This kind of success for the program hasn’t been as consistent as, on Saturday in Fulton at th Class 3 District 3 meet, the Centralia boys qualified for the state meet for the first time in school history while a Lady Panther team will be heading to the state meet for the first time since 1996. Three boys earned all-district honors by finishing in the top 30, including JR Lesher, Carter Moss and Landon Moss, and four girls met the same requirements, namely Jozelynn Bostick, Kenedee Moss, Shelby Lewis and Annie Robinson.

The boys finished third with 108 points to fall within the top four teams qualification requirement and the girls were second with 88 points behind winner St. Charles West’s 70 points. Father Tolton won the boys district championship by finishing with 49 points. Southern Boone swept the individual titles as Conner Burns won the boys race with a time of 16:19.2 — holding off runner-up Bowling Green’s Ben Chance’s time of 16:21 — and Alexandra Volkart had a first-place time of 18:53.8.

For the Centralia boys, Lesher was seventh out of 116 runners with a time of 17:13.9, Carter Moss was 12th with a time of 17:47.1, Landon Moss was 18th with a time of 17:57.7 and Rohan Holiman missed all-district by one spot with a time of 18:14.2 — Fulton’s Kai Foster had a 30th-place time of 18:06.9. On the girls side, Bostick was fifth out of 104 runners with a time of 19:54.9, Kenedee Moss was 11th with a time of 20:33.7, Lewis was 15th with a time of 21:09, Annie Robinson was 29th with a time of 22:15.5 and Rylee Palmer had the next best finish with a 41st-place time of 23:11.1.

Head coach Jason Watermann said he expected big things out of Lesher and Bostick this year, as has been the case before, but every other Panther and Lady Panther has helped make this a season to remember. In Centralia’s seven regular season meets, the girls never finished worse than second and the boys only finished below third once with a fourth-place at the Bowling Green Invite. According to virtual meets on MoMileSplit, the girls were supposed to get second and the boys were projected for fourth so everything went according to plan Saturday morning.

“They all went out real fast at the first 600 (meters) because it starts to bottleneck right at the softball/baseball field,” Watermann said about the girls. “And then they’re going to have to try twice as hard to get back in front so we tried to establish a place at the very get-go and just hang on.

“Landon Moss and JR Lesher took off like they were in front of Connor Burns for a little bit so I was a little worried there,” Watermann said about the boys. “Then they settled in. Carter Moss, Landon’s younger brother, came up so the three Moss siblings are all going to state.”

Everyone from Centralia will be converging at the Class 3 state meet Saturday at Gans Creek Cross Country Course in Columbia. Lesher, Holiman and Lewis will each make their second state appearances, and Bostick will be there for the fourth time, with last year’s race resulting in an all-state finish in 21st place. The girls are scheduled to run at 11:15 a.m., and the boys should start at noon.

“I knew JR and Jozelynn were going to have pretty typical, good years for them because they really go out and put in the miles over the summer and things like that,” Watermann said. “JR, he barely got on last year as an individual, he finished 30th as an individual last year. Then he got a little more taste of postseason at track and then I think that really made him go, ‘I want to move on.’”