The "Run-Down": Cottonwood Beach MS Invite @ Home

 

For the first time ever, the Middle School program got to take center stage down at Cottonwood Beach as they played host to a big-time meet. Eight other schools showed up to test themselves against the mighty Panther MS XC runners. With 125 finishers, this event is quite likely the largest race ever assembled at William Clark Park. The weather was beautiful with the sun gleaming in the blue sky. Excitement was in the air as our Panther mascot (Hannah Swigert as her alter-ego) encouraged each racer as they headed towards the finish.

 

As usual, the girls stepped up to the starting line first. 8th Grader Morgan Stinchfield showed that the previous performance on Saturday was not a fluke. She looked like a champ as she powered to the finish like she had never done before, and her 8th place finish (13:26) was 51 seconds faster than last year on this course and just 4 seconds out of the ribbons (top 6 in this meet). If she would have been our first Panther across the line, that would have been fine since there were a total of 9 teams, but we were fortunate enough to have a pair of 7th Graders "in the money" placing 3rd and 4th, thus placing 3 in the top ten. Olivia Dinnel (12:46) was close to the leaders at the finish chute and Gabby Warta (13:09) was a comfortably ahead of 5th place upon finishing. 7th Grader Meryl Keeler had a solid finish in 17th place to establish the Panthers as the best team through 4 runners. Classmate Brianna Elliot made a heroic decision to move up to our 5th runner (38th place) to give our girls a second place finish for that gender, but only 8 points out of first (Henkle). But the team trophy was to be earned by the combined score of both boys and girls. Another Panther that turned the heads of the coaching staff and teammates was 8th grader Emily Eakins. Her powerful finish and huge PR was evidence that she had been working hard, and her hard work was paying off.

 

The girls ran their best team race of the season. Now the boys had to come through to give the total team a chance to taste the team trophy. Could they make up the 8 points on Henke and hold off the other contenders?

 

The boys did not fare as well in terms of getting Panthers into the top 10. 7th grader Jonathan Wells was the only one of ours to do so as he secured 3rd place. 8th graders came through with the remaining scoring places. Dillon Tuite and Jackson Keyser paired up for 12th and 13th while Derek Lawton and Caden Lowman also ran in tandem in 24th and 25th. Scott Lees, another 8th grader continued to move up the ranks as he has shown steady improvement the past month. It was also nice to see fine races from 7th graders Ethan Mills and Zach Schroeder.

 

For the team score, the Panthers easily outdistanced the Henke boys by 37 points. The real test came from Hockinson, 4 in the top ten, and La Center, 3 in the top ten. The boys only placed third in that race, and were beat by significant double digits by those two teams, but the performance of the girls over those two teams was more than enough to declare the Panthers the best school!

 

So our team gets the big trophy, but all those that attended got to experience a wonderful race on a beautiful day. We all hope that we can have a similar experience next year.

  

Coach Terry L. Howard