The "Run-Down": Nike Portland XC

 

Our first "orange" course of the season. That means some fast times! Since we opened up the season with three "black" courses for the first time in my coaching at WHS, all first year teammates were in a good position to run hefty PR's.

 

The early morning Middle School races were frosted with cool, moist air, almost to the degree of misting. But some of the MS Panthers heated up the course as they scorched around Portland Meadows. With one less than 400 MS boys in the first race, it was the largest of the day! Our Jonathan Wells threatened to place in the top 10 at the half way mark. He faded to 15th, but amazingly was just 11 seconds out of 4th place as a dozen high quality runners packed it into the finish between 10:07 and 10:18.

 

Eighth grader Panther guys that made the coaching staff smile were Sam Lewis in 47th place to barely medal, Jace Poulsen whose 11:52 marked his first sub-12 performance and Nick Fisk with about a 100 second improvement. The seventh grader performances of note included Fischer Lees, Garret Ludma and the "Improvement King of the Week" Will Gunn, improving over 2 minutes!!! The team scoring gave Washougal an 8th place finish of 19, where many of the teams were clubs that included fine runners form several schools.

 

The girls matched the boys' team performance for the most part as they placed 10th of 21 teams. Eighth grader Olivia Dinnel, claiming 36th place, was the only girl to medal. But her classmate not far behind was the biggest good surprise of the day; Meryl Keeler clocked in right at 13 minutes, some 50 seconds faster than the Cottonwood race earlier in the week. With that level of performance, we all want to know what she had for breakfast, so we could have some as well. Classmate Brienna Elliot finally hit the course with as much speed, power and courage as she has in workouts lately and improved just over a minute from the Cottonwood race. Our seventh graders put on a show as well with three of them posting half minute or so PR's. No one was surprised that Sammy Mederos smiled her way to a great time, while Paige Maas powered across the finish line and Isabelle Klopman followed her cousin Olivia's fine example right at one minute behind of her.

 

As opposed to last year, our varsity girls got to sleep in a bit more as we moved up to the D2 race. This move was motivated by the opportunity to follow the Spudders to compete against them. It was a good move as we were just four points shy of them in the "big meet scoring" but we would have eclipsed them by one if scored as a dual meet. This time, our biggest surprise came up front as sophomore Amelia Pullen ran about a minute and a half faster than 4 days earlier at home. Her time of 19:52 landed her in 8th place and moved her into 3rd on the All-Time Panther list. Senior Hannah Swigert laced up her training shoes rather than her spikes and still set a Senior Class Record of 20:57.4. It appears it is just a matter of time, and a change of shoes, for her to drop that under 20 minutes. Other profound PR's came from freshman Tess Jones (89 seconds - JV) and sophomores Olivia Dayley (82 seconds - JV) and Hallie Morris (80 seconds). We will keep in mind that a good portion of the improved times came from the course, but these three girls improved more than most! Also worth noting, Junior Alexis Maniscalco raced a solid 3000 meter contest in 13:44.9, earning a medal with her 19th place finish in the Novice girls race.

 

For the guys, it took quite a while to find out our team place due to technical (or supposedly ethical) problems with the finish. Officials took extra time to review the video of the finish and adjusting places. Our very competitive fourth place was just 24 away from winning it. The next day, due to "placing adjustment complications," Athletic.net had us at the top, but it did not last "officially." The middle mile was probably the most exciting for Panther XC fans at senior Aiden Pullen and sophomore Gabriel Dinnel took and sustained the lead over the other 166 runners for a good portion of the race. Aiden finished in 4th with a significant PR (16:24.4) and Gabriel faded to 10th after getting tripped up by one of the bales of hay on the course. We were nearly as ecstatic with junior Tanner Lees (17:41.7) powering through his finishing kick in a big PR of over 20 seconds. Fellow junior Tanner Coltrane (18:27.4) posted a decent time on his first orange course and freshman Jackson Keyser (18:30.2) claimed the 2nd fastest freshman time in our district despite spending extra time on the ground due to extra pushing near the start of the race. The big improvement award this race went to freshman Scott Lees in the Future Varsity boys freshman race as he ran a PR by about 1 3/4 minutes! Honorable mention goes to sophomore Warren "Hollywood" Henderson with a PR by 1:02 over last year's best time.

 

The boy's novice race did have several Panthers perform well, despite an extra hard mile thrown in just prior to racing. They were lured into the Danner Championship race where they got to toe the starting line with the big boys. Ironically, it was almost forecasted the day before as junior Jacob Arata claimed he was up to the challenge of racing against Usain Bolt. He got a little taste of what that would be like on this day.

 

Two races this week. Next week we scale back to just one as we head to Ridgefield for the highly anticipated dual meet of the season with another high performance team that could produce some very exciting team races.

 

Coach Terry L. Howard

 

Here are the Line Scores:

 

Varsity Boys

 

1 Mile

2 Mile

5000 M

 

 Aiden

4th

5:08

10:30

16:24.4 

P.R.

 Gabriel

10th 

5:08

10:30

16:36.2

P.R.

 Troy

46th

5:30

11:16

17:28.9

 Tanner L

64th

5:32

11:16

17:41.7

P.R.

 Koy

84th

5:34

11:24

17:58.4

 Tanner C

109th

5:43

11:49

18:27.4

 Jackson

113th

5:40

11:47

18:30.2

 

 of 168

Future Varsity

 

Freshmen:

 Dallin

103rd

6:07

13:11

21:24.2

 Hayden

138th

6:56

14:13

22:06.5

 Scott

149th

6:56

14:01

22:15.3 

 Brett

231st

7:15

15:20

24:11.5

of 260

Sophomores:

 Warren

20th

5:55

18:46.9

P.R.

 Jeffrey

23rd

5:51

18:55.3

 Ian

25th

5:47

19:04.3

 Andrew

55th

6:06

20:08.5

P.R.

 Trent

141st

6:43

22:05.2 

 

 of 220

Novice

 

3000 M

 Jacob

16th

12:09.7

 Ryan

38th

6:50

12:36.5

P.R.

 Spencer

134th

8:56

16:44.8

 

of 53

 

 

Varsity Girls

 

 5000 M

 Amelia

8th

6:20

19:52.2

 Hannah

40th

6:25

20:57.4

 Brooklyn

92nd

6:53

22:12.9

 Annabelle

102nd

6:54

22:34.1

 Morgan

134th

7:09

23:28.0 

 Hallie

139th

7:10

23:41.4

 Bekah

150th

7:21

24:24.5 

 

 of 165

F. V. - Frosh/Soph

 Tess

103rd

7:43

15:53

24:40.5

 Olivia

110th

7:34

15:53

24:45.5

 Kaylee

123rd

25:06.7

 

of 215

Novice

 

300 M

 Alexis

19th

7:13

13:44.9

 Abby

201st

8:45

16:40.1

 Jeannine

246th

18:05.6

 Maral

253rd

9:18

18:46.7

of 274