The Sweet Home cross-country teams are running tired after some heavy training at the beginning of the season, but they’re still putting on a good show.
The Huskies faced most of the teams from their old league, the Capitol Conference, Thursday at Cascade High School and finished first on the boys side. A depleted girls team struggled with injuries and the 90-degree heat, but they managed to put two runners in the top 12 of the varsity race, enough to place fifth.
Byron Sanders led the boys varsity with a seventh-place finish in 18:29, followed by a string of Huskies – Jayce Calhoon in 10th (19:00), Dakotah Keys (11th, 19:11), Nikki Smith (20th, 20:02) and Casey Keys (21st, 20:09) for a team score of 69. Stayton and Estacada tied for second with 106 points and host Cascade finished fourth with 108.
The boys score would have been even lower if Rob Callagan had finished, but he went down hard mid-race and Coach Billy Snow said Callagan made a wise decision not to try to finish.
“If it had been districts, I would have wanted him to get back up and keep going,” Snow said. “But he did the smart thing. We would have dropped another 19 or 20 points with Robbie finishing. It’s nice to say we can lose one of our top runners and we are still right there.”
On the girls side, Olivia Johnson led the Huskies with a fourth-place finish in 22:18, while Carissa Swanson finished 11th in 23:14, despite being severely overheated at the end of the race. Jill Mahler was third for the Huskies in 24:41 (22nd overall), followed by Jenna Kistner (43rd, 27:25) and Caroline Amendola (57th, 28:42).
Catlin Gabel won the girls race with 49 points, ahead of Cascade (67), East Linn Christian (77) and Stayton 132, with Sweet Home fifth (137).
Freshman Sarah Hawkins was running well until an ankle injury she suffered the week before at Newport flared up and forced her to step out of the race.
“Our girls don’t have the luxury of depth,” Snow said. “They didn’t have a bad day, but the conditions got to them. We had a couple of little things go wrong.”
He noted that Hawkins was very close to Mahler when her injury forced her to stop.
“She was picking people off,” Snow said. He also credited Kistner with a strong effort.
“Jenna ran a great little race,” he said. “When she decided to start moving, she was picking people off left and right.”
Freshman Nick Hall finished third in the boys 3000 JV race, in 11:10, which was won handily by Sweet Home, as the Huskies also took fourth, fifth, eighth, 11th, 13th and 14th places. Jake Comstock (11:14), Joe Stroud (11:21) and Chris Thompson (11:46) all finished in the top 10. Other finishers were Michael Simmonds (11th, 11:59), Avery Shamek (13th, 12:20), Lorenzo Virgen (14h, 12:20), Brad Pitts (17th, 12:38), James Myers (24th, 12:55), Alex Whitlow (50th, 14:14), Anson Davis (59th, 15:05) and Conner Cunha (63rd, 15:55).
“The JV just ran great,” Snow said. “That was awesome, to pack it in like that. Out of that group will come one or two varsity kids.”
In the JV girls race, Natasha Perry finished 20th in 17:09, while Louise Wilcox was 50th (21:31).
Some, including Snow, questioned the varsity course length, which was supposed to be 5,000 meters. He noted that the boys winner ran a full minute slower than he had the week before at Tualatin, which was supposedly a harder course.
“Maybe the heat counted for part of it, but I think that course was long,” Snow said.
“Up and down the line I thought we had a good day. Those things happen. I’m glad they happened there and not at the district meet. It was just a rough day out there.”
The Huskies will be back in action twice this week, the first meet at Camp Tadmor Tuesday afternoon, Sept. 16, and the second at Seaside on Saturday, Sept. 20.