Dennler wins again for Cardinals

NINE MILE FALLS – Medical Lake sophomore runner Kaylee Dennler won yet another Northeast A League individual race Oct. 11 at Lakeside but her team fell short.

Dennler clocked a 20 minute, 18.3 second time too record win by less than 2 seconds over Lakeside's Tea Simonson (20:20.8) leading a 3-4-5 finish for the Eagles who won the team title 24-32. Medical Lake topped Freeman 17-39.

She was followed by Kaitlyn Wiley (21:21/5th), Hazel Grubaugh (21:54/7th)and Mya Gardner (21:57/8th) in the top-10.

The Cardinal boys were paced by Nakai Ornelas at 17:24.5 who was 14 seconds behind Freeman's Barrett Poulsen (17:10.6) as the Scotties scored a 27-28 win. Lakeside also edged Medical Lake 26-29. Hector Gomez 17:39.7/4th) and Hayden Luzier (18:28.2/8th) were other top-10 finishers for ML.

The Cardinals ran the race without Garrett Montney due to a concussion.

The Cardinals competed over this past weekend at the Lewis & Clark Invitational near Portland where they faced 29 boys and 28 girls teams.

The No.1 team for both boys and girls were from Great Oaks, California. Both teams are nationally ranked. Other teams came from as far away as Texas and Alaska.

"In other words, this was our toughest competition so far this year," head coach Gene Blankenship wrote in a Facebook post. "Our young men and women responded extremely well."

ML's girls finished No. 8 with Dennler recording an 18:55 "fast" time according to Blankenship. Ornelas, once again ML's fastest boy as he PR'd in 16:23 who as a team landed in 12th spot.

Seven of the Medical Lake boys and six girls set personal records on the 5K course.