New faces earn roles in Medical Lake cross country win

Medical Lake had the opportunity to make hay in the fading sunshine during last Wednesday’s Northeast A League cross country meet with a thin roster of runners from Newport.

But not wanting to run all over an undermanned team, Cardinals’ head coach Gene Blankenship found this race to be the perfect time to offer both rewards and rest to some of his runners. The state’s No. 6 ranked 1A team, Medical Lake, still rolled to a 15-47 win in the boys’ race and the girls also earned a win as no Newport racers scored.

“Newport only fielded five (runners), I thought they’d field eight,” Blankenship said. Newport is a program in the rebuilding mode, he said.

With that in mind, Nathan Butcher, a three-year member of the team, was given a chance to run. To do that Blankenship gave Mason Williams, Tyler Pena and Tenner Henry the day off from competition, but not practice.

The trio of boys, along with the top girls’ runners, Riley Olmstead, Mariah Pena and Audrie Donahay, each did track workouts to stay fresh.

Brandon McCoy, normally the No. 3 boys’ runner, took home first place in a time of 17 minutes, 53 seconds with Zachary Lewis next, and part of a 1-5 sweep for the Cards, clocked an 18:49.

Butcher, a first time varsity competitor was the final ML runner, finishing ninth in a time of 21:02. The full list of finishers is found in the West Plains Scoreboard.

“The girl who won it, Brittney Kenady, is one of my top runners, too, but she can’t race on Saturdays,” Blankenship said, due to her religion. “I wanted to make sure she got a chance to race.”

Kenaday clocked a 22:14 in her first tour of Medical Lake’s newly remodeled 5,000-meter course. Jenavieve Cogswell was second at 23:17.

ML’s new layout is now in full view of spectators, if they want to climb the football bleachers, Blankenship said. Notable in the revisions was removing three hairpin turns.

“We were hoping to get it faster but it certainly wasn’t Wednesday,” Blankenship said. “It had rained hard and it was really mushy.”

The course got its second test this past Wednesday when Medical Lake hosted the season’s third NEA race featuring Freeman and Chewelah.

Paul Delaney can be reached at [email protected].