Both Sweet Home cross-country teams pulled off shockers of sorts Thursday, Oct. 28, to earn trips to the state championships this Saturday at Lane Community College.
Though the girls were favored to win the district title and senior Olivia Johnson was the favorite to win the district individual girls championship – her third in as many years – no one expected the Huskies to sweep the competition like they did, placing their five scorers in the top 11 positions.
“I figured the girls would win but they ran better than I thought they’d run,” Coach Billy Snow said.
The boys, who were not favored to beat Sisters, let alone the league’s toughest team, Cottage Grove, pulled a shocker, as five runners posted personal-best times to carry the Huskies to a tie for second with Sisters, both teams scoring 44 points based on their top five runners’ finishes. The tiebreaker was sixth man Joe Stroud, who beat Sisters’ sixth runner, David Cowan, by two seconds to qualify the Huskies for their first trip to state as a team since 2008.
Johnson won the girls race in 20:20, followed by freshman Nicole Rasmussen in second (20:30) and senior Carissa Swanson third in 20:41. The three ran in a pack for most of the race, losing Sisters freshman Zoe Falk at about the two-mile mark. Rasmussen and Swanson continued on with Johnson until, with about a half mile to go, she pulled away for the win.
Johnson, who has placed first in four races this season, and in the top 10 in all the big competitions she’s been in, said Snow told her not to go any faster than she needed to to win.
“That didn’t last very long,” she said of her “slow” start. “We were trying to get top three and we were going to stay with Zoe. I went ahead and Carissa and Nicole held on. We did it.
“I’m ecstatic. I’m very excited. I was hoping (to win the individual title) but I wasn’t sure. Both Nicole and Carissa were doing good.”
Sophomore Paige Sanders was fourth for the Huskies (22:16), senior Caroline Amendola was 11th (23:09), senior Jenna Kistner 12th (23:15, a 33-second PR) and junior Kimber Swanson 21st (24:30, a 48-second PR) out of 30 runners.
Snow said he told his team to focus on gaining places, not just running fast.
“Watching all the girls throughout the race, they were all in their places,” he said. “The first three wanted to go one-two-three and right behind them was Paige, fighting. Behind her was Caroline and behind her was Jenna. And Kimber wasn’t going to be left out. She ran something like a 45-second PR.”
Sanders, who was nine seconds off her personal best for 5000 meters – set on a faster course – said she was bummed that she didn’t PR. “I was close to it,” she said. “I was only seconds away.”
“I think we knew we needed to push it in a group,” she said. “I can’t wait for state.”
On the boys side, Taylor Steele of Sisters was the individual champion in 16:36, with Alex Garcia of Cottage Grove 10 seconds back in second. Sweet Home junior Nick Hall led the Huskies with a third-place finish in 17:07 – 15 seconds off his personal best time. Hall said he was “a little sore” during the race, but he was happy with the way the team finished.
Sophomore Daniel Danforth was second for Sweet Home, in fifth (17:18, a PR of 18 seconds), senior Kyle Hummer seventh (17:30, a 24-second PR), sophomore Brett King 14th (18:05, a four-second PR), junior Lorenzo Virgen 15th (18:10, a six-second PR) and Stroud 16th (18:29, a four-second PR), with senior Alec Goetz rounding out the Husky scorers with 26th place (19:30).
Snow noted that the boys had trailed Cottage Grove and Sisters in every competition this year that they ran together prior to Thursday.
“Most of the time we weren’t in ballpark, not even close,” he said. “I told the guys the last few weeks to just run lights out and see what they can do.”
The new OSAA cross-country rules have made qualifying for state harder, as the top two teams from each league and any of the top five runners who aren’t members of those teams now qualify for state.
The formula until last year was the top two teams from each league would go, plus the seven fastest runners who weren’t members of those teams.
In the Huskies’ race, the sophomores, Danforth and King, followed Hall when he moved up behind the leaders and Hummer was right behind in the early going.
“After the first mile it was obvious we were in the thick of things,” Snow said. “I kept waiting for Daniel to get swallowed up but I think he was so fearful he would not get to state that he just hung on.”
Danforth said he didn’t run as fast as he thought he should have, but the race ended up being a “fun” one.
“My strategy was to stay with Nick and not to go out too fast,” he said “Actually, we did not expect to do that well. I’m really excited to go to state.”
Snow said he talked to the boys about each runner trying to move up a place “and we might have a chance.”
It worked, though Virgen and King got outkicked by Sisters’ fifth runner, Easton Curtis.
But Stroud managed to hold Cowan off on the home stretch.
“I just went as hard as I could,” he said. “You hear everybody counts but it’s hard to believe it. I knew the Sisters guy who was sixth was right there, but at the mile marker I just took off. When we got to the hill (before the home stretch) I looked back and saw that he was pretty far behind. I was scared he was going to outkick me. I basically didn’t have anything left.
“It feels incredible.”
Snow said the race demonstrated what a team sport cross-country is and he said the Huskies stepped up en masse to make it happen.
“It was not like Nick or Kyle had to go out do all by himself,” he said. “Other than Nick, our first (finisher), and Alec, our seventh, they all ran season’s bests. Everybody else, if they didn’t PR, they were right there.”
Hummer, who has been a wrestler for years and just began running competitively at the high school level last year, said it was a different experience for him to have his team qualify for state in cross-country after seeing the wrestling team breeze to district titles each of the last three years he has wrestled.
“In wrestling, usually the league is not as good,” he said. “We just work hard and win. Here, you work hard but it’s a really hard league.
“We thought we were coming in underdogs. We heard Cottage Grove was supposed to have 44 points on us. When we got everybody in, Nick, Daniel, and me, I was surprised to have second. To come up and do this is pretty awesome.”
Hall said qualifying for state that way will be good for the Huskies going into the state meet.
“I think we have more confidence going into state. I think we had a chance, but didn’t exactly have the confidence going in that we were able to do this.
“We ran as a team, not as individuals like last year. As a team we did good.
Neither the JV boys or girls had enough runners to score as a team, but Avery Shamek was second in the boys race with a season PR of 44 seconds in 19:04, with Justin Stoner in 12th (20:19, a 40-second PR), Anson Davis 14th (20:26) and Chase Hutchins 18th (20:42, a PR by more than a minute).
On the girls side, Tashana Mithen placed fifth (25:47), Emily Egbert 12th (27:42) and Liz Egbert 13th (27:58).
The state meet starts at 10 a.m. with the 3A/2A/1A races. The 4A girls run at 11:15, followed by the 4A boys at 11:50 at LCC. Tickets are $8 for adults, $5 for students with ID.
Snow said the Huskies just need to keep doing what they’ve done all year on the girls side, and replicate their performance at districts on the boys.
“Our goal on the girls side is still to get into the top four and trophy,” he said. “I think we’ve got the group who can get it done. They’ve had a lot of success and they’ve run well this year. We’ll just see if they can do it again. It’s not like they haven’t run against these schools.
“The guys, there’s teams we’re right there with if we run with the same attitude we did at districts. We’re shooting for the top seven with the guys.
“We’ll see what happens. I’m excited.”