The first statewide coaches poll has been released and both our boys and girls teams are ranked #4 in the state!   It was a bit of a surprise to me, but as Siuslaw Coach Chris Johnson told me, “Reputation goes a long way.”

I think that our runners understand this.   In our 2^nd meet of the season the solid reputation of Philomath High cross-country was on full display.

37 schools sent runners to the 45^th annual Silver Falls Invitational, also known as “The Monster” because of the difficult hill climb in the middle of the race.  But Philomath runners are never intimidated by hills.  We train on a lot of “monsters.”  And it seems that every year Philomath places in the top three for both boys and girls at this big invitational.

579 runners finished their respective races.  And most of them finished behind all of our runners.

Many schools entered incomplete squads, especially in the girls’ race which had 15 complete teams.  I now know what it is like to have an incomplete team.  We had that for the first time in 30 years last week.  But not this week!  This time we had five varsity runners and they finished a close 2^nd to 5A Silverton, a school with an enrollment twice that of Philomath.

Super sophs Meaghan Alba and Tegan Weaver led the way finishing 5^th and 8^th respectively.   Kendra Sheeder, who just started running a little over a week ago, demonstrated her incredible talent by placing 19^th.  Quinn Damitio, recently returned from a trip to Iceland, fought off jet-lag to place 20^th.   And Kindra Coleman, who stepped up from the JV ranks to fill in for Jenna Grunwald who was playing in a big soccer game, fought off significant back pain to finish 39^th.  Silverton beat us by a mere nine points, but we topped such traditional 4A powers as Scappoose and Sutherlin as well as the much-improved Central, now in the 5A division.  After our first meet with a complete scoring team we are 13-1.

Our boys were equally, if not more impressive.  They not only got revenge on Catlin Gable, the team that beat them last week, but easily beat 26 of the other 27 teams they raced.  Only Silverton topped them by a slim three points.  But Silverton was helped by the displacement factor in a big meet.  If you take out all other runners and score the meet as a dual meet between Philomath and Silverton then Philomath wins 25-30.

Andrew Damitio had the race of his life, finishing 2^nd overall (out of 210 finishers) and 1^st among the large school entrants (4A-5A-6A).  Mitchell Thomas, who led the field through the first half, fought of an upset stomach to place 5^th overall and Tim McIllroy entered the elite sphere of cross country runners by placing 9^th.  This big three was backed up by Clay Youker in 26^th, Clark Hellesto in 39^th and Kurt Foster in 45^th.   The boys are now 33-2 against all complete teams they have faced in the first two meets.

Our JV boys also finished 2^nd in the meet and are now 12-1.  They were led by Marcus Weaver in 6^th and Karl Hellesto in 10^th. Xayd Magana finished 14^th, Hunter Foster was 17^th and James Golston was 21^st to complete the team scoring.  They were backed up by Jensen Davis in 23^rd; Big Keith Larson in 44^th and Jeremy Sieperda in 99^th.

We had two entrants in the JV girls’ race and both ran strong.  Kirsten Bovbjerg placed 24^th and Wren Isaacs was 42^nd out of 104 finishers.  Now we have nine days to get ready for meet #3 which is the Oregon City Invitational on Saturday, Sept. 20^th.   Eleven of the fourteen teams entered are in the 5A and 6A divisions, so this should be a real test for our teams.