After several weeks of hilly courses, the Sweet Home cross-country team finally got a chance to run a flat, fast race and they made the most of it €“ considering three of their top five boys runners weren’t in the lineup Saturday, Oct. 10, at the Paul Mariman Invitational at Philomath.
Getting a taste of the course that will be used Oct. 31 in the Val-Co District championships, the Husky girls finished fourth out of 14 teams, while the boys were seventh out of 16 teams in the varsity race with edging Central, which finished eighth. Sweet Home runners took advantage of the course in establishing many personal bests.
“I was pleased with what I saw,” Coach Billy Snow said. “The girls were competitive. There were some huge PR’s.”
The girls, behind Olivia Johnson’s 14th-place finish (20:50.39) in a field of 98 runners, finished with 130 points. Philomath was third with 121 points behind Annette Marinello’s winning run of 19:10.17. Johnson’s time was a minute faster than she ran as a freshman in 2007, the last time Sweet Home competed in the event.
Carissa Swanson was second for the Huskies, 16th overall in 21:32.86, a 40-second PR over her freshman time in 2007.
But the big performances of the day were Caroline Amendola and Jessica Snow. Amendola finished 24th, in 21:57.05, a lifetime PR by more than a minute over any course. Snow, who is running cross-country as a senior while also starting at forward on the Sweet Home girls soccer team, set a lifetime PR of 1:40 to finish 43rd in 23:04.22. Rounding out the scoring for the Huskies was freshman Paige Sanders, who delivered a 49th-place finish in 23:12.32, a PR by 43 seconds over her previous fast time of her first high school season, set in the first meet at Cascade.
Marinello ran just behind Sutherlin’s Chelsea Spencer for three-fourths of the race, then took the lead and left Spencer in the dust en route to a 14-second win. Siuslaw nailed down the fifth through seventh spots en route to the team title with 47 points. Banks was second with 116.
With the district meet looming, Snow was eager to see how his runners would fare in a meet that included all five of the Val-Co teams.
“The top two runners did what they were supposed to do,” Snow said, noting that both Swanson and Jessica Snow suffered cramping in their calves during the race, but still managed PRs. “The top three were in front of Central’s first runner.”
Billy Snow noted that if the meet were scored just on the finishes of Val-Co teams, Sweet Home would have actually beaten Philomath and Central on the girls side.
“If we just score with our league, we’re right there with Philomath,” he said.
The boys were missing their top runner, Nick Hall, along with Avery Shamek and Lorenzo Virgen, who have been running third and fourth for the Huskies. Byron Sanders nailed a 24th-place finish in the field of 107, in 18:02.06, to pace Sweet Home in a 30-second-plus course PR. A “rag-tag” team of JV promotees and the rest of the depleted varsity stepped up to fill the missing holes.
Andrew Jiles, running his first varsity race for the Huskies after transferring from Lebanon, made it count with a 40th-place finish in 18:45.98, a 1-minute improvement over the time he ran over a similar course at the Lebanon Invitational in mid-September. Jiles, who ran 17:41 at districts for Lebanon last fall, “had a big race,” Snow said.
Casey Keys was third for Sweet Home in 18:50.36, good for 44th place and a season PR €“ 22 seconds off his lifetime best at 5,000 meters.
Freshman Daniel Danforth was fourth in 48th place and 19:00.26, a 51-second lifetime PR, while Chris Thompson rounded out the varsity scoring with a 60th-place finish in 19:31.05, just five seconds off his season’s best from Cascade.
Sisters’ Parker Bennett pulled away from the lead pack to win the boys race in 16:04.66, but Siuslaw took the next two spots and four in the top 10 to win the team trophy with 35 points.
Snow was pleased with his runners’ efforts.
“For the guys to finish seventh in a big meet lie that €“ we’re missing four of our top five, time-wise,” Snow said. “If we can run that well with that group, if we can get a healthy three or four guys coming back, we’re looking pretty good. We’ll see.
“It was good to see them run well on the course that’s going to be the district course.”
Jake Comstock, still recovering from injuries, was sixth in the boys JV race, running 19:14.84 to pace the junior varsity to a fourth-place finish behind Philomath.
Thanks to illness, injuries and conflicts, no Sweet Home girls competed in the JV race.
The Huskies will be back on the road Saturday, Oct. 17, at the inaugural Bristow Rock-n-River Invite, a flat 5k single track trail race through meadows, over trails and through trees at the Elijah Bristow State Park in Dexter, hosted by Pleasant Hill. Boy’s varsity starts at 9:30 a.m., followed by the girls varsity at 10:15, then an open and JV race.