Going into the district meet this Thursday at Lane Community College, Sweet Home’s boys cross-country team knows exactly what it has to do: catch some people.
That was clear Wednesday, Oct. 19, at the Country Fair Classic at Elmira’s Country Fair Grounds.
The Huskies had a good day, finishing with five personal-best times for 5,000 meters from eight runners in the varsity race.
The course, which is popular among local high school runners as the final competition before districts, winds through the quirky village, forestlands and open meadows on Fair Grounds. PR’s are common on the fast surface.
This year, though, nearly a week of heavy rain from the leftovers of Typhoon Songda left parts of the course where the race usually starts and finishes under a sheet of standing water. Organizers reconfigured it, but with some 30 schools represented at the meet, problems ensued.
Sweet Home freshman Corban Wright went down near the start of the junior varsity race with a broken leg. Noah Dinsfriend, running in the boys varsity, also went down in the pack at the start and escaped with slashes on his arm from someone else’s spikes.
Bixler said the field was too large for the configuration of the course, which included two rather tight turns through which the 290 varsity runners poured at the start of their race.
Sweet Home finished 24th out of 30 teams in the varsity race, which was won by Sheldon with 99 points, ahead of Grants Pass (140) and South Medford (167). McMinnville, led by individual winner Zane Fodge (15:33.1) was fourth.
Junction City was the top Sky-Em finisher, in 11th with 331 points. Elmira was 19th (457), followed by Cottage Grove in 20th (471), Sweet Home (625) and Sisters (682).
Trey Reed led Sweet Home in 54th place out of 290 runners in 17:25.6, a 16-second PR.
“Trey had a fantastic PR,” Bixler said.
Tanner Sayers was 123rd in 18:23.5, followed by Ricky Yunke, listed as finishing 157th in 18:53.4; Kobe Olson, 178th in 19:16.4; Noah Dinsfriend, 183rd in 19:24.0; Zach Zanona, 190th in 19:35.1; Noah Taraski, 193rd in 19:37.6; and Cameron Taber, 228th in 20:39.2.
Yunke said he and the Huskies behind him finished at least one place higher than the results indicated due to another runner cutting ahead of them in the finishing chute. Nonetheless, he, Olson Zanona and Taraski all had personal bests.
Jordan Pollard of Sisters was the top Sky-Em finisher, eighth overall in 16:24.6, followed by Carson Bain of Elmira (20th, 16:51.6), Konrad Raum of Cottage Grove (27th, 17:01.5), and Junction City’s Benjamin Swancutt (32nd, 17:06.8), Ryan Meighan (43rd, 17:16.2) and Pete Frazee (48th, 17:22.7).
“Everybody did exactly what they could,” Bixler said. “Unfortunately, we can’t expect any more than that.
““It went reasonably well, but when you look at the results for everybody else in the league, they did too.”
Nick Rietz (21:44.2) and Tristan Saultz (21:47.6 posted PR’s in the JV race.
The Sky-Em League Championship meet will be held Thursday, Oct. 27, in conjunction with the 5A-3 Midwestern League Championship. The junior varsities will run combined 4A and 5A races at 12:05 p.m. for the girls and 12:40 p.m. for the boys.
The Sky-Em varsity girls will run at 11 a.m., followed by the boys at 11:35. The top two teams will qualify for the state championships on Nov. 5, along with any individuals not already on those teams who finish in the top five.