The boys cross-country team finished second last Thursday at the Cottage Grove Harriers Challenge, while the girls tied for third with Marshfield.
Coach Billy Snow said the Huskies needed to improve their cross-country strategy, which emphasizes team members finishing as close as possible to each other.
The boys were bunched, he said, but the bunches were too far apart. The girls had a different problem.
“If you take every one individually, they had a good race,” he said. “They just weren’t close enough together.”
Junior Byron Sanders led the Husky boys with a second-place finish in 17:55, about a minute and a half faster than his time over the same course last year. Robert Callagan was right behind Sanders in third (18:05) followed by Jayce Calhoon, who fell early in the race and didn’t finish as close to Callagan as he normally does, settling for 21st place (19:16).
Behind Calhoon were Nikki Smith (23rd, 19:20), Casey Keys (24th, 19:25), Jake Comstock (25th, 19:25) and Dakotah Keys (29th, 19:38).
Pleasant Hill, which finished first in the team race with 62 points, bunched its runners better, even though Sanders and Callagan were well ahead of any Billies finishers.
If you take look at the results, we had two in before they had anybody, but they had 8-9-12-13-14,” Snow said. “We had beat them the week before (at the Sweet Home Invitational). Our two groups ran tight but our two groups weren’t close enough together. We got out-cross-countried.”
West Albany was a distant third (117) in the boys race and Cottage Grove was fourth (121).
Olivia Johnson led the Huskies to a third-place tie with 5A-division Marshfield in the girls race, finishing in 21:51 – nearly two minutes faster than her time last year as a freshman.
Cottage Grove finished first with 46 points, followed by Oakridge (76) and Sweet Home and Marshfield (78).
Cottage Grove runners won both the boys and girls individual titles. Sam Settelmeyer took first in the boys race in 17:33, while Patricia Guterrez was nearly a minute ahead of the field in 20:59. Second-place runner Emily James of Douglas finished in 21:50, a second ahead of Johnson.
Carissa Swanson was second for Sweet Home, finishing eighth in 22:45, followed by Jill Mahler (19th, 25:03), Caroline Amendola (27th, 25:42), Jenna Kistner (35th, 26:36), Sarah Hawkins (43rd, 27:47) and Natasha Perry (46th, 28:03).
“Every one ran a good race,” Snow said of the girls. “If you take each one individually, they had a good race.”
But he said the Huskies need to finish closer together to be more competitive as a team.
He noted that two runners who moved up from the junior varsity, Comstock and Perry, both ran “probably the best races of the day.” Perry ran two minutes faster than her time last year in the junior varsity race over the same course.
Snow also said that Amendola “had a great race,” moving closer to Mahler than she’s been in previous races.
Louise Wilcox was the Huskies’ lone girls JV runner, finishing the 5,000-meter course in 39:58.
In the boys junior varsity race, Michael Simmonds finished fifth overall for the Huskies (20:18), followed by Nick Hall (6th, 20:19), Joe Stroud (8th, 20:21), Avery Shamek (12th, 20:45), Lorenzo Virgen (14th, 20:49), Chris Thompson (15th, 20:50), James Myers (31st, 21:58), Alex Whitlow (57th, 25:07), Anson Davis (68th, 28:33), Josh Lowe (70th, 29:39) and Conner Cunha (71st, 30:40).
The Huskies are running the Junction City Invitational at Richardson Park on Tuesday, Sept. 30, then will be out of competition until Friday, Oct. 10, when they compete in the Philomath Forest Run at Beazell Memorial Forest in Kings Valley.