Boys win as expected, girls surprise with their victory
Medical Lake cross country got one result it expected and another it didn’t at their final Northeast A League regular season meet Oct. 21 at Freeman, and both were good.
The Cardinals collected team victories for both the boy’s and girl’s squads. The boys breezed past Freeman 15-45 and Chewelah 15-46 to finish third with a 5-2 record while the girls, 4-3, edged Freeman 26-33 and easily topped Chewelah 15-50 to finish fourth in the standings.
Sophomore Mason Williams led a contingent of six Medical Lake runners across the finish line with a time of 16 minutes, 29 seconds. Senior Jacob Dingfield was back in competition after sitting out the last meet. He finished second, 30 seconds behind Williams.
“That’s his first race back other than running JV,” head coach Gene Blankenship said of Dingfield who has been battling an injury. The boys had five PRs, including freshman and first time varsity runner Zachary Lewis, whose 18:01 was good for that No. 6 finish. Full finishes can be found in the West Plains Scoreboard on page 10.
Blankenship expected a tougher challenge from Freeman on the girls’ side, but learned their No. 1 runner from the previous season opted to not run in 2015.
Blankenship said it was effort.
“Our girls ran good,” he said. The Cardinal girls had four personal records, including Mariah Kroeze’s 20:57, good for second overall. Medical Lake had six runners in the top-10.
Freshman Jenavieve Cogswell was still recovering from an injury, but “She still PR’d,” he added, running 23:38 on the 3.2 mile course. Cogswell was the No. 1 girls’ runner most of the early part of the year until she got hurt and fell back in the pack.
“The girl that has started to come on is (Mariah) Pena,” Blankenship said. “She was only one second behind Mariah Kroeze.”
Next up for both teams is today’s (Oct. 29) District 7 championships at Chewelah Golf Course starting at 2 p.m. where berths to next week’s state meet are on the line. Boys will have three team berths at Pasco while the girls have only two coming out of districts.
“We have a couple of girls, Kroeze and Pena, who are going to try to make the top-10 so they get to go as individuals,” Blankenship said. “(But) my girls keep telling me we’re going to finish second,” so they can reach state as a team.
“Maybe they know more than I do,” the coach said.
Paul Delaney can be reached at [email protected].
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