MEDICAL LAKE — Gene “Swami” Blankenship had it nailed again when it comes to his cross country runners.
The Cardinals coach predicted last week that his boys would prevail last Saturday, April 2 against Lakeside (Nine Mile Falls) in the Northeast 1A League winter/spring regular season finale.
They did by a 26-29 count on their home track.
Blankenship also saw that Lakeside might just be a bit too good on the girls side. They were by a 23-32 count.
Lakeside boys crafted a 1-2 finish with Hayden Blank’s 17 minute, 14.26 second finish topping the field on the 5,000-meter course. Blank was followed closely by Colby Splichal’s 17:15.50.
Medical Lake had the next four finishers: Ben Henry (17:19), Reid Headrick (17:22.60), Quintin Collins (17:22.83) and Connor Palmen (17:37.50).
Running together, the pack swayed the team win their way. Sam Ornelas (19:01.40/11th) was the other Cards’ finisher.
“I probably explained this before that in a dual meet, if you go one, two, three on somebody you can’t lose,” Blankenship said. “But when you go one, two on somebody the rest of your kids — the opposing team — really has to run exceptionally close together.”
The Cardinals managed to pull those four together and might have had five had Kyler Castro (18:13.29 / 8th) not been banged into — all legal and usually by accident — in some of the parts of the narrow, barked portion of the course.
Medical Lake seemed to have a dominant finish in order until the final leg on the running track.
“We had him all the way until we got onto the track last time — about 250-300 meters to go — something like that a little bit more,” Blankenship said. “They just out kicked us, they deserved it, they ran a good race.”
Despite falling as a team Blankenship said his girls ran one of “the best races of the season,” vs. Lakeside. “Kayla (Ramsey) was a little upset because her time was slow, but our course in general is slow,” her coach said. “We changed it a lot to try to make it faster for this race; it didn’t work.”
This was the first time that Medical Lake ran a full contingent on varsity.
Lakeside’s Makaylie Stockert (20:31.16) paced the field, followed by teammate Matise Mulch (20:53.75) with Ramsey third at 21.28.64. Grace Grubaugh (22:56.88/6th), Katie Hiatt (23:25.86/8th), Jenna Castro (24:17.45/9th), Paige Headrick (24:24.53/10th), Delaney Gunther (25:26.29/12th) and Maris Tuck (27:29.15/13th) completed the ML field.
How each of these races played out might serve Medical Lake runners as a pre-test for the NEA league finals which take place on the same course at noon Friday, April 9.
Football
Medical Lake football remained winless (0-4) and scoreless through the winter/spring Northeast A League season following a 41-0 home loss to Freeman on April 2.
The quirky season sees the Cardinals play twice during spring break with a game on Tuesday, April 6 at Newport before they return home to meet Riverside (Chattaroy) at 1 p.m. Saturday, April 10, at Holliday Field.
Paul Delaney is a retired former Free Press Publishing reporter. Email him at [email protected].
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