Sweet Home’s boys cross-country team gave a foretaste of what could be Thursday with a second-place finish at the Darrell Deedon Invitational at Cascade.
Trailing only Estacada (57 points), the boys scored 87 to beat 11 other teams in a race that Coach Billy Snow called “a breakthrough” for the group.
“Now they can start to see what I see,” Snow said of the Huskies early promise. “We have a good team, but we’re not the top dog. When they have a common goal and work together for that goal and support each other, they can be impressive.”
Jess Keys (17:46) and Jake Smith (17:57) both ran under 18 minutes for the 5,000-meter course, both well under the times they ran in the same meet last year. Peter VanDerlip (18:12), Robert Callagan (18:32) and Ramiro Santana (18:33) rounded out the top five for the Huskies, who were grouped between 11th and 24th place.
“Packing our top five to seven runners close together and near the top is where our strength lies,” Snow said.
Josh Rice placed 31st (19:05) and Byron Sanders rounded out the varsity for the Huskies with a 72nd-place finish in 21:29.
Central was fourth (119) in the team standings, behind Catlin Gabel (103). The other ValCo team in the race was Newport, which placed 12th with 318 points.
The girls were led by Cassandra Schumacher, who cut a minute and a half off her time from last year to run 20:21 for fifth place.
Jessica Trautwein was 24th (23:35), Ashley Danielson was 30th (24:19), Staci Grove 50th (26:50) and freshman Jill Mahler rounded out the scoring for the Huskies with 52nd place in 27:09.
The girls were fifth with 161 points, just behind Newport, with 146. Catlin Gabel was the winner with 69 points, followed by Madras and Cascade, both with 116.
“I’m not sure where that came from,” Snow said of the girls’ finish in the team standings, “but I like it.”
Land Florek placed second for Sweet Home in the junior varsity 3000 in 10:35, followed by Nikki Smith (eighth in 11:22), Brandon Rice (15th in 11:37), Dustin Cloud (22nd in 6:23) and David Rinehart (75th in 7:45.
Lacey Hightower placed 28th for the Huskies in the girls JV, running 17:47, just nosing out Afton Rodgers, who finished 29th in essentially the same time. Louise Wilcox finished 33rd for the Huskies in 21:02.
Sweet Home is running at Camp Tadmor Tuesday afternoon at 4 p.m. in the Tadmor Invitaitonal, then will compete at Seaside on Saturday.