Husky harriers competed Saturday at Philomath in what Coach Billy Snow called a “high-powered meet involving 26 schools with virtually all of the top 3A and some really good 2A schools and competitors present. We had two goals in mind, running seasons bests and seeing how we stacked up against league schools.”
Coach Snow said virtually all of his runners had personal bests for the day.
“We had a great workout with our weekly Lydiard run,” Coach Snow said. “The kids ran so well I went out and remeasured the course to make sure the distance was right. Based on that I knew the kids were ready to run fast. The number of season best times are indicative of that. Some of the PR’s were about a minute under what the kids have run, others less than that. It was the fiirst time that we had all our Varsity boys under 20:00 and two girls under 24. The good news is that I don’t think we’ve tapped out yet. The kids have been running well and hopefully will run 30 seconds to a minute faster come districts. We’re going to need it.”
On the boys side, North Marion only has five guys but they ran great, Coach Snow said, beating both Cascade and Sisters for the first time this year.
“We have our work cut out to beat one of those teams. It will take at least three guys and better yet, our five scorers running under 18:45. Just looking at the four league schools in this meet, our fifth runner was at 19:44 and was 20th out of the 20 scoring runners from the 4 league schools. Drop a minute, and we are sixth out of the 20 runners. They are all packed in that 18:30 to 19:45 area except the top few guys.”
Coach Snow said that for the girls, it is looking better to finish fourth. He believes that as they continue to drop times they will move closer to the top half of the league “but we just do not have the fire power to catch Cascade, Molalla, and Sisters as a team.”
Varsity Girls (112 runners)
Ashley Danielson: 23:04, 69th, PR tie
Jessica Trautwein: 23:38, 77th, PR
Chelsea Hackworth: 25:13, 88th, 5 seconds off PR
Heidi Wilson: 25:43, 95th, PR
Staci Grove: 25:57, 97th, PR
Katie Barr: 26:17, 98th 1st race of year
Girls team was 13th out of 13 complete teams
Boy Varsity (Out of 150 runners)
Peter VanDerlip, 19:09, 76th, PR
Sam Bishop: 19:23, 93rd, PR
Alex Ritzman: 19:25, 96th, PR
Jess Keys: 19:28, 99th, PR
Dallin Holden: 19:44, 105th, PR
Anthony Erstgaard: 19:59, 112th, PR
Boys team was 19th out of 22 teams.
JV GIRLS (out of 63 runners )
Heidi Darden: 30:10, 57th
Danyel Cranford: 31:03, 60th, PR
Jessica Andrade: 31:04, 61st, PR
JV BOYS (out of 111 runners )
Jake Smith: 20:54, 45th, PR
Sam Crain: 22:59, 88th, 7 seconds off PR