The "Run-Down": District Meet @ Lewis River Golf Course

 

Today is the day! Today is the day we hopefully prove that our boys’ team is the best team in the school’s history and in the district. For the girls, the aim is for the best team in the district, even though they are not the favorites. Our boys have battled the Ridgefield Spudders all season long, beating them in the early season and losing to them the past two weeks, albeit feeling that if we ran our very best we could even up the score. The girls basically flip-flopped the “Spudder scenario” as they lost the dual meet at the beginning of the year but have dominated them since. But the bigger fish to fry (or foul to fry) were the Thunderbirds of Tumwater and the Hawks of Hockinson (who were only a handful of points better than us the week before).

 

Our girls stepped to the line concerned about the health of Junior Brooklyn Bausch as she was nursing some sort of calf strain. We knew she needed to be at or near full strength to contend to win out of the 13 team field. Shortly after the gun went off, Junior Amelia Pullen took an early lead (earlier than expected) and never looked back. She did negotiate the course with no major deviations, as opposed to last year, and smashed the course record by 50 seconds! Freshman Meryl Keeler was edged out for 4th place at the finish, but it was by the Aberdeen girl that was on an incomplete team so it did not impact our score. Her time of 20:06 upped the ante on her freshman class record. Brooklyn ran fairly solid the first 2/3rd of the race with classmate Annabelle Palmer. Annabelle finished with her first P.R. of the season; Brooklyn faded to our sixth runner but still was good enough to add one more point onto Hockinson’s score to help with a narrow victory against them. Senior Alexis Maniscalco continued her streak of significant P.R.’s (21:50 in 33rd place) and our most consistent Panther girl sophomore Morgan Stinchfield squeaked out a P.R. by less than 2 seconds for the third week in a row! Our score was good enough to get us to state as the third seed from our district, with the faster two teams on that day within striking distance if we could put together a perfect day in Pasco. So for the second year in a row and the third year of the past 4, the Panther girls get to pack their bags for the Pasco trip. There they hope to truly answer the question regarding who is the best team in the district.

 

Back at the George Fox meet, we were able to argue that the boys’ team was the fastest team ever, based on times. However, we know we had plenty of room for improvement. So today was the day to put that issue way beyond having to make such an argument. Could we get all 5 scorers under 17:00? A task that just 4 years ago would have seemed impossible as that year we were the first Panther team to have 5 guys break 18 minutes, and just barely! Could we bring home the district crown? This task is something that has apparently eluded the Panther boys in the school’s history.

 

Junior Gabriel Dinnel had the confidence to actually lead the first mile, but other contenders Kyle Radosevich (Ridgefield) and Joseph Morrissey (Tumwater) would not let him go out and hide. The three of them were all in contention as they raced down the final stretch, all three finishing within 3 seconds and all three just under the course record. Gabriel, placing 2nd, shaved off a tenth of a second from his George Fox P.R. But Classmate Troy Prince-Butterfield sliced 7 seconds off from the same benchmark race, narrowly missing 5th place. His time of 16:24 moved him up from 10th to 7th on the Panther All-Time list, and just 6 seconds from number 5! Our pack of remaining scorers was in closing in fast as well. Although they did not quite capture sub 17 performances, the times of 17:05, 17:05 and 17:07 were much more impressive for Senior Tanner Lees, Junior Ian Palmer and Freshman Jonathan Wells, the latter two apparently battling residual effects of illness. Not a perfect day, but a very, very good day! It was by far the best performance ever by Panthers, but we came up short of the Spudder performance of the day. The boys join the girls on the journey to Pasco. For the second year in a row, Panthers send two teams… the only team in our League to do so. The Tumwater team also earned that honor, in fact they have done so the past 5 years, a good goal for our Panther squad!

 

So Friday morning, we will pack up 2 vans full of Panther runners for another exciting trip to Pasco.

 

Coach Terry L. Howard

 

 

Here are the line scores:

 

Varsity Boys		5000 M
Gabriel	2nd	15:56	P.R.
Troy	6th	16:24	P.R.
Tanner	21st	17:05	P.R.
Ian	22nd	17:05	P.R.
Jonathan	23rd	17:07	P.R.
Koy	43rd	17:46
Warren	50th	18:02
	of 91
Varsity Girls
Amelia	1st	18:30	C.R. P.R.
Meryl	5th	20:06	P.R.
Annabelle	29th	21:42	P.R.
Alexis	33rd	21:50	P.R.
Morgan	35th	21:54	P.R.
Brooklyn	36th	22:00
Bekah	41st	22:20
	of 75