The "Run-Down": Home Meet (C.R., M.M., W.S. & Stevenson)

 

Our only home meet of the year. And the weather was wonderful, as usual. Not to mention that the sand farthest away from the water was exceptionally hard this year due to the flooding a few months earlier; this factor helped make it plausible to run halfway decent times for a black course.  We even had some of our other running friends from the gorge come and join us in running against Mark Morris and Columbia River.

 

The boys raced first.  Running without our state contender junior Gabriel Dinnel (sick) and last week’s #5 sophomore Jackson Keyser, we still stepped to the starting line believing we had enough fire-power to take on the other teams. The first loop seemed a little tenuous with four Columbia River Chieftains in the top ten, but the second loop belonged to the Pack of Panthers as juniors Ian Palmer and Koy Chaston accompanied by freshman Jonathan Wells for the most part swapped places with their 2nd through 4th runners from behind. While treading down the beach on the final loop, junior Warren Henderson decided to move up and join that pack, giving the Panthers 5 of the top 7 spots in the five team race. Classmate Troy Prince-Butterfield was comfortably the first runner across the finish line in 17:45. Although “any color” P.R.’s were not expected, this race did produce two of them from sophomore Hayden Stinchfield (20:35) and freshman Ted West (20:34) who battled it out on their finishing kicks for bragging rights. Two others, both juniors, ran season’s bests, Warren Henderson, seven seconds faster than Nike four days earlier, and Trenton Lowe who “made up for lost time” as he missed the Nike meet. Although the Chieftains ran their finest race of the season by far, our depth along with winning some of the close races within the race was enough produce a 21 point win over them, and a bigger margin of victory over Mark Morris as their top runner sat out this meet. Our new winning streak number? 14!

 

For the Panther Girls, we expected a bit more of a challenge. Columbia River came in to the meet with a perfect league meet record with a solid group of gals in the 21’s and 22’s. Junior Amelia Pullen set another course record (19:48) as she took revenge on the White Salmon girl that beat her last year, taking the course record away from her. But the team win was really dependent on how well runners 2 through 4 performed. The first loop was scary close, and we were possibly losing by a point or two. The second loop, freshman Meryl Keeler moved past their second runner and started pursuing their #1 while junior Brooklyn Bausch led a couple of teammates into a position of mixing it up with their pack. That gave us some breathing room of 8-10 points. The final score was stretched to 19 points as one of their top runners pulled out due to ankle injury (not to mention they also were missing one of their top three girls at the starting line). The girls also out-ran a fine team from White Salmon, and the Mark Morris girls were incomplete, thus forfeiting to the Panthers. Two more league wins gave the Panthers a share in the dual meet title with Columbia River and doubled their winning streak to four! When it came to improvements, the girls also displayed a hand of “two pair” with a couple of lifetime P.R.’s, senior Alexis Maniscalco (22:43) and sophomore Denise Lara (27:27) with classmate Kaylee Timmons and junior Olivia Dayley posting their fastest times of the year despite being on a black course.

 

Our next meet is the George Fox XC Classic on Saturday October 14th at Willamette Mission State Park just northwest of Salem a few miles. This is the “Orangest” course of our schedule; we will appropriately label it “Cosmic Orange” (an actual color name used for Astrobrights Color Paper) as we expect our times to be out of this world!

 

Coach Terry L. Howard

 Here are the line scores:

 

Boys

 

5000 M

 

 Troy

1st

17:45

 P.R. Black

 Ian

3rd

18:10

 P.R. Black

 Jonathan

5th

18:13

 

 Warren

6th

18:16

 P.R. Black

 Koy

7th

18:18

 P.R. Black

 Tanner

12th

18:40

 

 Caden

15th

19:03

 P.R. Black

 Andrew

20th

19:28

 P.R. Black

 Ethan

37th

20:29

 

 Ted

39th

20:34

 P.R. Any

 Hayden

40th

20:35

 P.R. Any

 Derek

41st

20:36

 P.R. Black

 Sage

49th

21:48

 

 Trent

52nd

23:02

 P.R.

 Scott

54th

23:19

 P.R. Black

 Maddox

63rd

24:37

 

 Brett

64th

24:55

 P.R. Black

 Carson

65th

25:06

 

 

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Varsity Girls

 

5000 M

 

 Amelia

1st

19:48

 C.R. & P.R.

 Meryl

6th

22:04 

 P.R. Black

 Alexis

7th

22:43

 P.R. Any

 Brooklyn

8th

22:45

 P.R. Black

 Morgan

9th

22:46

 P.R. Black

 Bekah

14th

23:32

 

 Kaylee

15th

23:44

 P.R. Black

 Olivia Dayley

24th

26:00

 

 Denise

30th

27:27

 P.R. Any

 

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