Sweet Home’s cross-country runners tuned up last week at a meet in the Portland area as they prepared for the league championships, which will be held Thursday afternoon, Oct. 28, at Lane Community College.
The league meet will likely be the end of the season for the Huskies, barring a breakout performance by an individual runner, and it will end a year that has been challenging, to say the least.
Sweet Home, normally flush with competitors, has lacked enough runners this season to score as a team on either the boys side for most of the year, and all year for the girls, as sophomore Lydia Wright has been the lone runner for the Huskies in nearly all the meets.
Then, as a result of COVID vaccine restrictions, former Coach Kambria Schumacher was replaced last week. Nicole Wingo, who coached the distance runners last spring in track, has stepped in to finish out the season, Athletic Director Dan Tow confirmed.
The Huskies ran Thursday, Oct. 21, at Valley Catholic’s Valiant Invitational, which was an unusual late-season cross-country race in that it was only 3,000 meters.
Thanks to some confusion, Coleman ended up in the slower field and won going away, in 10:37, 30 seconds ahead of his nearest competitor.
Aiden Shamek was 20th in the field of 114 (12:14) and Kyle Watkins, who has been running for the Huskies for three weeks, was 30th (12:32).
Wright was 35th out of 124 runners in the girls race, finishing in 13:36.
The Huskies will need a minimum of five runners to score as a team Thursday. Clearly, that isn’t going to happen for the girls, and the boys will need two more runners besides those who competed last week.
Junior Jake Sieminski, who is also playing football, is Sweet Home’s top runner, but the question will be whether he had had enough practice to compete for a top-five finish, which will be necessary to quality for state as an individual.
The girls race starts at 3 p.m. Thursday. The boys run at 3:45.