The "Run-Down": All-League @ Lake Sacajawea

 

"Weather" or not, here we come! After last week's threat of hurricane force winds that we were able to avoid, the forecast for our All-League meet in Longview called for 20+ mile an hour winds 24 hours prior. There were lightning strikes and a few heavy showers in the morning, but the clouds gave way to blue sky and calm winds by the time we arrived to the race sight. Perfect! Perfect weather! Perfect challenge from our Ridgefield opponents! Lots of PR's were inevitable.

 

The future varsity girls race revealed a pleasant surprise half way through the race as junior Alexis Maniscalco positioned herself in second place. Holding on to that position the second half of the race and clocking a final time of 24:02 was an impressive 1:22 PR! Not far behind in 3rd was sophomore Olivia Dayley, with an eight plus second PR. Junior Jeannine Jones saved her best for the last race of the season (as usual) with a 90 plus second season's best, while senior Maral Atto posted another huge (nearly a full minute) PR for the third straight week, improving an impressive 2:51 in the month of October! Although only third in the team scoring, we were only 8 points away from winning.

 

Since we ran 10 on varsity for the boys, our Future Varsity boys had some new blood leading the way. A massive 32.5 second PR came from freshman Caden Lowman as he gracefully zoomed across the finish line in 5th place. Two of his classmates posted larger PR's: Dallin Kanzler (20:31 - 35 second PR) and Hayden Stinchfield (20:47 - 1:19). As you might guess, Hayden's performance was worthy of our Runner of the Week award. Other PR's from this group came from junior Jacob Arata (4 seconds) and senior Ryan Perkins who finally eclipsed his phenomenal performance from the same race last year by 22 seconds.

 

Moving on to the Varsity Girls race, it appears that there were many individual decisions rather than a global one to not wear racing shoes (well, at least for the scoring five). We still managed three PR's at that level, and Sophomore Brooklyn Bausch (by far our most consistent Panther girl in 2016) missed by tenths of a second. The PR's that did come were substantial: junior Bekah Shilling clocked in at a 20 second improvement, sophomore Annabelle Palmer at two dozen seconds and freshman Kaylee Timmons topped that by a couple of seconds with at 26 second PR. The final score vs. the Ridgefield Spudders was at a 14 point differential, a deficit we knew we could overcome once racing shoes were adorned and we compete as we did today.

 

Now the guys' race was quite an adrenaline rush. 90% of our Panthers in this race ran PR's. Columbia River impressed us by being right on our tail. The race had the most massive pack finish I have ever witnessed at the All League meet with 12 runners finishing between 17:39 (a PR from our sophomore Koy Chaston) and 17:49 (a PR from our Freshman Jackson Keyser). Our front running duo of senior Aiden Pullen and sophomore Gabriel Dinnel comfortably waltzed through the course in 2nd and 3rd place, both in the low 16:20's. Sophomore Troy Prince-Butterfield finally posted a PR for the season in 17:09, while classmates Warren Henderson (17:53) and Ian Palmer (18:08) locked in PR's as well. Our junior Tanner twins put on a great show, too. Lees was 17th (17:40 - a PR by about 2 seconds) and Coltrane (18 second PR) finished like a house of fire and heroically caught Ridgefield's Brandon Lehto for 22nd place.

 

The weather may have calmed for this event, but the competition was more like a hurricane. Although we only managed to scare Ridgefield rather than beat them as the score was 49-51 when all was said and done, it was a historic race for the Panthers. It was the first time we had 8 runners on a team break 18 minutes. We had never had more than 6 before this race.

 

We are healthy and emotionally ready for the weeks to come as we now enter the championship series. Next week we travel to Lewis River Golf Course just outside of Woodland as that race is our gateway to the State Meet in Pasco!

  

Coach Terry L. Howard

 

Here are the line scores:

 

Varsity Boys

 

5000 M

 Aiden

2nd

16:21

P.R.

 Gabriel

3rd 

16:24

P.R.

 Troy

13th

17:09

P.R.

 Koy

16th

17:39

P.R.

 Tanner L

17th

17:40

P.R.

 Tanner C

22nd

17:43

P.R.

 Jackson

27th

17:49

P.R.

 Warren

28th

17:53

P.R.

 Ian

34th

18:08

P.R.

 Jeffrey

43rd

18:42

 

 of 59

 

 

Future Varsity

 

 

 Caden

5th

19:20

P.R.

 Andrew

14th

19:54

 

 Dallin

20th

20:31

P.R.

 Hayden

24th

20:47

P.R.

 Jacob

28th

20:54

P.R.

 Derek

35th

21:33

 

 Scott

55th

23:34

 

 Ryan

57th

23:44

P.R.

 Brett

64th

25:05

 

 of 69

 

 

Varsity Girls

 

 

 Amelia

2nd

20:02

 

 Hannah

7th

20:59

 

 Brooklyn

14th

21:52

 

 Annabelle

16th

21:53.9

P.R.

 Bekah

19th

22:23

P.R.

 Kaylee

30th

23:30

P.R.

 Hallie

34th

23:59

 

 of 49

 

Future Varsity

 

 Alexis

2nd

24:02

P.R.

 Olivia

3rd

24:31

P.R.

 Tess

6th

25:25

 

 Jeannine

16th

28:28.4

 

 Maral

21st

33:13

P.R.

 Abby

23rd

33:14

of 105