The Huskies ran in two high-powered meets that attracted many teams last week.
First, they competed at the Waterloo Invitational on Wednesday and then the Philomath Invitational on Saturday. According to coach Billy Snow, on a list of the top 40 times of the year, many were posted at the meet at Philomath, which was probably a good preview of state. In addition to that, Snow said that he was able to assess the entire conference because all of the teams were there. Molalla and Sisters seem to be one and two in the conference, while Sweet Home could be in the running for third place.
Unfortunately, the Huskies number one boys runner was not there. John Lovik, who took 8th place in a new season PR at Waterloo, was too sick to run Saturday. In trying to keep pace at the Philomath meet, all the boys ran season bests. Senior Aaron Lovik led the Huskies with his 60th place finish in a race that featured 127 runners. Lovik set a lifetime best while Tyler Kistner and Ryan Sipe ran seasonal bests. In Sipe’s case, he went under the 21 minute mark for the first time. Peter Vanderlip, a JV runner who had a late start on the season, improved in both of his races as he works his way up to become the 5th varsity runner.
For the girls, who still have just four runners, Megan Snow keeps getting better each meet.
She set a lifetime best at Waterloo to finish 16th of the approximately 70 racers. At Philomath, she whittled another 30 seconds off her lifetime best to finish 25th out of 117 runners and 8th among Capital Conference runners. She will have to place 7th at the district meet to go to the state meet.
The other three girls, Katie Barr, who ran with a sore leg, Jessica Trautwein, and Stephanie Kragness all set PR’s at Philomath.
The team has two more meets before the district meet, one this Thursday at Cottage Grove and another the following Thursday, hosted by Creswell at Lane Community College, where they hope to see all the Capital Conference teams one more time before district.