Nicole Rasmussen finished sixth in the large-schools race to lead Sweet Home’s girls to a fifth-place finish at the Silver Falls cross-country meet Wednesday, Sept. 14.
The meet attracted eight large-school – 4A and up – teams.
The Silver Falls course is one of the toughest in the state during the early part of the season, with a steep, half-mile hill nicknamed “The Monster” halfway through the race.
Coach Billy Snow predicted The Monster would cost his runners about four minutes each and that’s about how it turned out, he said.
“That was a heck of a hill,” he said.
The boys did not place because their leading runner, senior Nick Hall, had to pull up and step out and that left the Huskies with four runners. They needed five to place as a team.
Daniel Danforth was eighth in 21:29.5, Jakob Hiett was 14th (22:43.8), David Johnson was 34th (25:19.5) and Nick Mattson finished 48th (27:34.8).
Rasmussen was 11th overall and sixth in the large-schools race, finishing in 26:23.5. Paige Sanders was 14th (28:12.5), Kimber Swanson was 31st (31:07.8), and rounding out the Huskies’ finishers were Laura Hoy (34:45.1), Trysta Lewelling (34:45.9) and Tashana Mithen (34:49.2) packed in at 36th, 37th and 38th place.
“I think the kids, overall, had a pretty good day,” Snow said. “I think the hill got to some of them.”
The Huskies had two runners in each JV race. Saul Jones, running his first cross-country race, ran the 3,200-meter course, which included The Monster, in 16:32.3, good for 39th place. Trevor Melson was 70th, in 23:14.3.
For the girls, AnneMarie Miller was 31st in 21:32.0 and Candalynn Johnson was 49th 24:19.7.
Snow said Jones put on a notable performance in that he ran the entire hill without stopping to walk, as many runners did in both the JV and varsity races. Other bright spots, he said, were Johnson, who was running his first varsity race, and Hiett.
“That was a good surprise, that David could step up, and Jakob is coming along,” Snow said. “He continues to show that he’s one of the top freshmen around.”
The girls, he said, will need to pick it up a little down the road.
“Nicole went out too slow,” Snow said. “She could have easily been in the top 10. We were packed, but we were packed in the back. We were passing people, but unfortunately the people we were passing were our own people as our runners kept switching places.”
Morgan Anderson of Silverton, one of the host schools, was the girls winner, in 23:58.9. while Zach Holloway of Central Linn was the boys winner, in 19:58.3. East Linn Christian Academy placed its top five runners in the top 20 of the small schools to win the boys small-school team race with 51 points.
Sweet Home is hosting its own invitational Tuesday afternoon, Sept. 20, at Camp Tadmor, where the hill will not appear as daunting after the Silver Falls experience, Snow said.
“I think the kids enjoyed it,” he said of Silver Falls. “They said ‘Tadmor will be easy now.’”
The Huskies will then travel to Camp Rilea north of Seaside for the 3 Course Challenge on Sept. 24.