With districts a few days away, the Sweet Home cross-country teams are peaking just about the right time, Coach Billy Snow said after the Huskies ran Wednesday, Oct. 19, at Elmira.
“It was a fast course with some fast times and really tough competition,” Snow said of the event, in which the boys finished 10th out of 19 (complete) teams and the girls were ninth out of 15. Sweet Home’s boys finished just behind Philomath and ahead of Central, and Snow was pleased with their effort.
“All the kids either ran a season best or their second-fastest time of the season,” he said. “No one who ran their second-best time was far off their season best. From a coach’s perspective, it looks like we are peaking at the right time.”
Jess Keys was our top boys finisher for the Huskies with a PR 17:15 to finish 37th in the 130-runner field. Peter VanDerlip (17:27), Jake Smith (17:53) and Robert Callagan (17:55) all finished below 18 minutes as well. Ramiro Santana was 71st (18:22) and Josh Rice was 76th (18:40) to round out the boys scoring.
“Despite all of that, many of the varsity kids were disappointed with their results,” Snow said. “That’s OK, since their goals are set pretty high. The guys expect to run in the 17’s when two years ago we could not get a guy there.”
For the girls, Cassandra Schumacher finished 15th, in 20:04, while Ashley Danielson recorded a “big season PR,” Snow said, running 22:20 to finish 48th out of 115 runners. Jessica Trautwein was close behind, in 54th place (22:35), with Jill Mahler (85th, 25:08) and Staci Grove (87th, 25:11) rounding out the scoring for the Huskies.
“Cassandra expects to be running with the top girls and Jessica and Ashley expect to be running low 22’s or faster,” Snow said, noting that the girls view their results similar to the boys. “Staci and Jill continue to push each other and lower their times.”
Next up for the Huskies is Districts at Newport at noon Saturday, Oct. 28.
Snow said that unless “a ringer off a soccer team or somewhere else” shows up, it looks like Philomath is the team to beat for the boys, with Central and Sweet Home vying for the second berth at the state meet, which will be the following Saturday, Nov. 4, at Lane Community College.
The Huskies beat Philomath at Camp Tadmor and have been close to them all season, “but they are running well as a group right now and a bit faster than us,” Snow said. “We have too much of a gap between our number one and number five runner right now. ”
“It looks like it will come down to which team can have five runners on come Saturday,” he said. “We could finish first to third.”
Individually, Javier Orozco of Central is the man to beat.
On the JV side, Philomath and Sweet Home should battle it out with Central a step behind, Snow said.
In the team race, Snow said Philomath and Newport should battle it out with Sweet Home looking to crash the party if either team falters. Philomath, with one of the fastest cross-country runners inthe state in Halli Beli of Philomath, is tough at the top, though its runners tend to be more spread out than Newport, Snow said.
“We just are too spread out from first to fifth, but if either team is off and we are on, we could sneak into second place,” he said.
On the JV side, Philomath “should take it in a cakewalk as they are the only team with numbers and quality on the girls side,” he said.
Individually, Belli is the odds-on favorite, with Schumacher, who made state as an individual last season, running second.
The top two teams qualify for state along with the top four individuals who are not members of either state-qualifying team.