Cardinals cruise to district title at Chewelah

The Medical Lake Cardinals are not only on a roll as they head to Pasco this Saturday to defend their state 1A cross country championship, but arguably their best runner is too.

Fresh off a convincing victory at district competition Oct. 30 at Chewelah Golf Club, senior Micah Dingfield is running his best, Cards' head coach Gene Blankenship said.

Medical Lake scored a 23-47 win over Riverside with both schools earning team berths at state, staged at the 5,000-meter Sun Willows course. The Cardinals took three of the top five spots and five of the first 10.

The Medical Lake girls finished fourth, failing to qualify their team for state, but they will send individuals Mariah Pena and Maleeka Wegner to Pasco.

Dingfield clocked a 16 minute, 1 second time - a personal record - and finished ahead of fellow senior Domenic Rehm at 16:09.

"He's just coming around great," Blankenship said of Dingfield.

Junior Jacob Dingfield, Micah's younger brother, was fifth at 16:23 followed by senior Noah Kroeze (sixth/16:25) and freshman Mason Williams (ninth/16:39).

All ML runners except Jacob Dingfield set PRs in the race, but Blankenship said Jacob was hampered by cramping in his calf, "Or he would have finished third."

"This is the second year in a row he's won the district championship," Blankenship said of Micah Dingfield. "We told him we were going to bring him along slow, that's what we've done."

Micah Dingfield has been running hurt since a year ago and competed with a stress fracture in his foot at both regionals and state in 2013. He has showed slow and steady improvement all season. He finished in a tie for first with Rehm in the big showdown Northeast A League meet with Deer Park, Oct. 22.

At districts, Rehm was feeling the effects of having been spiked earlier in the meet, Blankenship said.

The unsung effort came from Kroeze. "Noah had the race of a lifetime," Blankenship said. "The kid's incredible."

"I tell him all the time (that) he does not have the same kind of running talent (some of) the rest of the kids have," Blankenship said. "But he has guts."

Williams has also showed significant progress. "He's come on real good through the whole season," Blankenship said. Williams won the freshman race at the prestigious Highlander Invitational. "He was a solid fifth."

Deer Park was a distant third with 62 points and perhaps a surprise.

"The Riverside coach (Tim Hart) came up to me and said, 'you're going out hard,'" Blankenship said. "That's the way we run," the Cardinals' coach replied.

"Good," Hart said. "We're going to lay back and try and pick off Deer Park," he told Blankenship. And they did, peppering three runners into the top-10 while the Stags had just one.

The Northeast A League has the top two spots in the most recent coaches' poll with Medical Lake and Riverside ranked 1-2. Kings is No. 3. "Riverside could challenge us (at state)," Blankenship said.

"We didn't run real good at sixth and seventh." Blankenship said. He expects senior Wil Noble who was ill to be back in the No. 7 slot Saturday in Pasco.

Mark Jensen, sixth last Thursday, had issues with his quad and Blankenship sees better performances from those positions.

"If he's healthy I think he's going to do real good on Saturday," Blankenship said of the sophomore.

Medical Lake's girls finished fourth in team standings, unofficially with 71 points. Lakeside won with 40, Riverside had 65 and both will send their team to state.

"It was decided at fourth and fifth," Blankenship said.

But the effort was there as six of the seven Cardinal girls had personal records.

"I'm really ecstatic with my girls, I mean we finished second in the league," Blankenship said. "We've beat teams we've never beaten before."

"We were a little disappointed Sakaiya (McCoy) didn't get into the top-10," Blankenship said as he had hoped to get three girls to state. McCoy missed 10th by 19 seconds.

Paul Delaney can be reached at [email protected].