Our regular season is now concluded and the Philomath cross-country teams are preparing for next Saturday’s Oregon West Conference Championships at Philomath High School.  The races begin at 11:15 AM with the varsity girls.  The JV girls will be in the same race but differentiated by a blue ribbon on their jerseys.  Varsity boys start at 11:50 and the JV boys’ race at 12:15.  This will be the end of the season for our JV runners, although our top JV boy and JV girl will accompany the varsity teams to state as the alternates.

The top two varsity teams will advance to the OSAA state championships at Lane Community College on Nov. 1^st.   Both of our teams are favored to place 1^st in the OWC Championships.

Our regular season ended on a high note at the Oregon Country Fair Classic.  And it is a classic course; flat, fast and magical.  And with the added high level competition from 6A powers South Eugene and Sheldon, any runner with a competitive bone in their body was likely to record a great time.  So it was with the entire Warrior squad.  Everyone ran a season or lifetime best.

Kirsten Bovbjerg and Wren Isaacs were up first in the JV girls 5k and they recorded season best times of 24:28 and 25:50 to finish 46^th and 82^nd respectively in a field of 146 runners.

The JV boys were up next and the results were impressive as our top five finishers all broke 20 minutes for 5k.  There are varsity teams in the state that can’t do that.  The JV boys lost only to South Eugene, Marist and Roseburg.  They beat all other schools entered including Sheldon, a 6A program with 80 runners!  The JV boys improved to 34-12 on the season with all their defeats coming from 5A or 6A programs.

Marcus Weaver led the way finishing 13^th in a season best 18:21. That earned Marcus the final varsity spot for the conference meet.  Karl Hellesto placed 17^th in 18:39; Xayd Magana was 30^th in 19:12; James Golston took 38^th in 19:28; Jensen Davis placed 53^rd in 19:54; Hunter Foster was 60^th in 20:13; Big Keith Larson took 72^nd in 20:32 and Jeremy Sieperda was 102^nd in 21:30.  There were 170 runners in the JV race.

The varsity girls were up next.  They had a fantastic showing despite the fact that three girls were exhausted from having played a soccer game the day before!  But that didn’t seem to bother the amazing Meaghan Alba, who finished 11^th in a star-studded field that included several of the top 5A and 6A runners in the state. Meaghan recorded a fantastic time of 19:08.

As usual it was Tegan Weaver and Kendra Sheeder who followed Meaghan to the finish line.  Tegan clocked 20:10 to place 22^nd and Kendra was right behind, placing 27^th in 20:25.

Kindra Coleman had the race of her life, finishing 46^th as our surprising #4 runner in a lifetime best of 21:23.  Quinn Damitio was close behind, placing 54^th in 21:35.  Molly Klipfel and Jenna Grunwald rounded out our varsity seven by placing 65^th and 69^th respectively in 21:55 and 21:59. There were 173 finishers in the varsity girls race.

The girls finished 4h overall, very close behind Marist, the #3 ranked 5A team in the state.  Top ten ranked 6A schools South Eugene and Sheldon took the top two spots.  Philomath beat all of the other 4A schools as well as several 5A and 6A teams, improving our season record to 54-10.

The varsity boys wrapped things up for the Warriors, finishing 8^th out of the 25 complete teams to improve their season record to 79-18.  Five of the seven teams that beat us were in the 5A or 6A divisions.  But we did lose to 4A teams Marshfield and North Bend, at least in the official results.  That cannot happen at state if we want any chance at a top four team trophy.  In all fairness the results were off a bit.  Tim McIlroy is listed as 47^th in 17:16.  He actually placed 35^th in 17:00.  North Bend is listed as defeating Philomath 201-215.  Putting Tim back where he actually finished takes 12 points off our score to put us at 203.  But it also adds three points to North Bend’s score as it moves their #3, 4,and 5 runners down a spot.  So we likely defeated North Bend 203-204.  But I won’t make a big deal out of it.  There could have been other mistakes in the results.  And we’ll just beat them at state.

Mitchell Thomas was our top finisher, placing 18^th in 16:33.  He was followed by Tim in 17:00.  Andrew Damitio placed 49th in 17:17.  Clay Youker, despite playing a soccer game the day before, was our #4 man with a season best time of 17:31, placing 57^th and Clark Hellesto ran a lifetime best of 17:33 to place 60^th.  Kurt Foster solidified his position on the varsity squad with his first sub-18 clocking.  Kurt placed 69^th in 17:46.  There were 207 finishers in the varsity boys’ race.

Please keep checking your emails this week for information about the upcoming OWC Championships; a little history of our cross-country teams, and a reminder that our one big fundraiser, the McDonald Forest 15k, is coming up on Sunday, October 26^th at Peavy Arboretum.  We provide course monitors and could make $800 for the program.

I want all cross-country runners to do one or two good long distance runs on natural surfaces this weekend.  We will also run in the woods on Monday.  Sara will be sending out text messages to the team.

As always, thanks for your continued support.

Chief Joe