Sweet Home Invitational
Sweet Home’s girls squeaked by Philomath to win the team competition Tuesday, Sept. 19, at Camp Tadmor while the boys held off Philomath for second place to finish behind Cottage Grove.
A mistake by Philomath’s number two runner was the key for the Husky girls, who scored 59 to Philomath’s 60 after Yessi Alvarado took a wrong turn and dropped to last place. Cassandra Schumacher led the Huskies with a second-place finish in 21:39.4 for the 5,000-meter course, behind Philomath’s top runner, Hayley Belli, who ran 19:31.1 to lead the field of 33 competitors. Schumacher’s time was 50 seconds better than last year’s on the same course, Coach Billy Snow said.
Junction City was third (63), Central fourth (67) and Creswell fifth (79) in a tight competition.
Jessica Trautwein was second for the Huskies in ninth place (25:03.0), followed by Ashley Danielson in 10th (25:12.2), Staci Grove in 19th (27:27.3) and Jill Mahler in 23rd (28:56.7).
“The girls ran a great team race. Had any one of them backed off, they would not have made it,” Snow said. “Our 2-5 runners battled through out with Central. Staci and Ashley have been sick but gamely hung in there with some critical passes late in the race.”
The Husky boys were led by Jess Keys, who placed eighth in the field of 40 runners in 19:09.2. Central and Philomath both placed two runners in the top seven. Cottage Grove, which won the meet with 42 points, had the first, third and fourth finishers. Behind Keys, though, were Peter VanDerlip, eighth in 19:02.2, Robert Callagan, (10th, 19:12.5), Ramiro Santana (12th, 19:15.2) and Jake Smith (15th, 19:25.1) to round out the Huskies scorers. Freshman Dakotah Keys, stepping in from the soccer team, ran 21st in 19:57.4, while Josh Rice was 31st in 21:00.9.
“The guys had a good second half of the race,” Snow said. “Jake has been sick and is below par and Dallin (Holden) did not run due to illness.
“At the one-mile mark, Philomath had their guys packed in tight and their sixth runner was with our third. Our kids started moving on or after the big hill and kept it rolling all the way to the end.”
Sweet Home scored 54 points for second, followed by Philomath (58), Central (73), Stayton (126) and Junction City (155).
In the boys JV 3000, finishers for the Huskies were KC Hanscam (second out of 39 runners, 11:50.8), Land Florek (third, 11:54.2), Brandon Rice (13th, 12:39.2), Nikki Smith (14th, 12:40.3), Byron Sanders (16th, 12:49.6), Dustin Coleman (17th, 12:52.7), Li Xiang (20th, 13:19.0) and David Rinehart (36th, 16:30.6).
Philomath scored 26 points for the win, followed by the Huskies (42), Central (71) and Cottage Grove (109).
Philomath finished 1-5 in the girls JV race and was the only team with enough runners to score out of a field of 15. Afton Rodgers was the top finisher for Sweet Home (12th, 20:23.4), followed by Lacey Hightower (13th, 20:24.0) and Louise Wilcox (15th, 23:46.0.
Seaside Invitational
At Seaside on Saturday, Sept. 23, the Huskies were split into individual races rated by the courses – hard, medium and easy.
The top finisher for the Huskies was Cassandra Schumacher, who ran the hard course in 27:46.0 to place 21st out of 314 runners, cutting a minute and a half off her time over the same course last year.
“Cassandra continues to run like a girl possessed,” said Coach Billy Snow. “She was well over a minute faster on a slower course. Each of the races was larger than last year, including the boys difficult that had nearly 100 more finishers. There were a couple of bottlenecks in the medium and hard course that really
slowed kids. And both courses were so choked with runners that passing had to been done when the opportunity was presented.”
The boys team placed ninth out of 18 teams in its category, Snow said.
On the hard course, for the boys, Jess Keys was the first Husky finisher, running 24:13.9 over the course that Snow said was about 5000 meters.
“Nobody’s every measured it,” he said. The hard and medium courses include stretches of sand and hills that contribute to the runners’ pain.
Keys beat his time from last year by 70 seconds and placed 77th out of 503 runners.
Snow said there were over 90 schools represented with 2,257 finishers according to the result sheets.
“That is just a lot of runners! he said. “At least one school was from the LA area.”
He estimated the easy course was about 2.5 miles, based on the finish times.
Other “hard course” finishers for the boys were Jake Smith (160th, 25:55.3), followed immediatly by Ramiro Santana (161st, 25:55.8), and Dallin Holden (219th, 27.02.9), Dakotah Keys (271st, 28:14.7) and Nikki Smith (303rd, 28:45.8).
The top “Medium Course” finisher for the boys was Robert Callagan, who placed 67th out of 416, running 23:37.3. He was followed by Peter VanDerlip (77th, 23:54.9), KC Hanscam (88th, 24:06.3), Byron Sanders (229th, 27:13.7) and David Rinehart (391st, 32:26.6).
The top “Easy Course” finisher for the boys was Land Florek, who finished 83rd out of 361 runners in 15:39.3. He was followed by Ziang Li (167th, 17:22.6), Brandon Rice (186th, 17:45.5) and Dustin Collman (210th, 18:05.7.
Behind Schumacher, the only other “hard” finisher for the Huskies was Jessica Trautwein, who ran tired, but finished in 31:47.4 for 158th place, and nearly a minute and a half faster than she ran the same course last year.
“Jessica said she wanted to drop out and that is not like her,” Snow said.
Jill Mahler placed 187th out of 339 runners on the “medium course” in 33:41.3, ahead of her sister Lacey Hightower, who ran 41:15.8 for 323rd place.
On the “easy course,” Afton Rodgers ran 27:04.4 for 297th place out of 324 runners, while Louise Wilcox ran 35:18.4 for 322nd place.
The Huskies are running at the Newport Preview Tuesday, Sept. 26, and will follow that up with a race at Cottage Grove Thursday, Sept. 28.