Stop me if you’ve heard this one: Hood River Valley brought home another trophy from the OSAA state cross country championships.
It was the Eagle boys who hauled away hardware this season, finishing fourth in the Class 5A race Saturday at Lane Community College in Eugene. Hood River, which scored 161 points, has won either a boys or girls trophy (top four) at the state meet for the past seven seasons — no meet was held in 2020 because of COVID. The Eagle girls, fourth a year ago, were seventh (170 points) this past weekend.
Senior Elliot Hawley’s seventh-place finish led the HRV boys; he ran a personal-best 15 minutes, 45 seconds on the damp 5,000-meter Lane course. “Definitely the team finish, man,” said Hawley, when asked about what was more satisfying to finish his prep cross country career — individually as an all-state runner or as a team trophy winner. “Without those guys, I wouldn’t be here right now, so it’s definitely the team.”
Miles and miles of training can wear on a person after a while, and Hawley was appreciative of his teammates — the workout partners who leaned on each other throughout the season, as well as Coach Brandon Bertram.
“I just told those guys (teammates) before the race started that this is it; this is what we’ve been working for since June, but a lot of us have been running consistently since February,” Hawley said. “I told them to go out there and run for each other. And fourth place, I can’t complain. It’s a podium finish. And we got fifth last year. Fourth in a very good 5A (level) … it’s hard to put words to.”
The HRV senior easily found the word for the pace of the 5A boys race: “Fast!” Individual winner Tyrone Gorze of team champ Crater saw to that. Gorze built a 20-meter gap on the field after 400 meters and didn’t let up enroute to the fastest 5,000 clocking ever in the state meet — at any level — of 14:37. His Comet teammates finished 6-8-9-10 for a dominant win.
Breaking up that group of Crater’s bright orange singlets was Hawley, who isn’t one to back down from a challenge. “I knew it would go out fast and I knew that Crater’s one of the top teams in the country, so having that in the back of my mind, I’ve kind of got to adapt to the race conditions,” he said. “It worked itself out because we did go out fast — the first mile was very fast.”
Gortze covered the opening mile in 4:29, and Hawley was with a group of runners in the 4:46 range. “When that happens you either drop back or you catch people who drop back. Today it just worked out,” he said.
Hawley, who was 11th at the state meet in 2021, did both. He slipped from sixth to eighth (at 2,000 meters) before recovering for his seventh-place finish.
Behind him, his Eagle teammates were experiencing similar ebbs and flows; HRV was in seventh place as a team after the opening mile. No. 2 runner, senior William Bunch, finished 26th in 16:40. Bunch, 33rd at state in 2021, worked his way up eight places after the mile mark and finished within nine seconds of his lifetime best (set on the very fast Champoeg State Park course earlier this season).
Sophomore Logan King was HRV’s No. 3 runner, tying his personal best of 17:01. King, experiencing state for the first time, also made up ground between the first and second miles, improving 12 places. Fellow sophomore Kai Wagner, who was 63rd a year ago at state, was 46th this season, in 17:11 — and improved 19 places between the first and second miles. Frosh Sebastian Clarkson was the fifth HRV scorer in 65th in 17:52. Sophomore Davis Kerr (67th in 18:00) and senior John Beckman (79th in 18:23) competed the Eagles’ fourth-place team.
The HRV girls, fresh off their seventh successive district cross country championship on Oct. 26 at Blue Lake Park, finished seventh with 170 points. Seniors Phoebe Wood and Olivia Nickson, as they have for most of the season, led the Eagles. Wood was 20th in 19:44 and Nickson 23rd in 19:52 for HRV. Frosh teammate Syl Perrin was 36th in 20:54; Alex Bronson was 46th in 21:08; Cristine Kinoshita was 55th in 21:38 to complete the Eagle scoring. HRV’s sixth and seventh runners at state were Charlotte Fuller in 58th in 21:44 and Sadie Bauman in 74th in 22:40.
Wood, who was third at the Oct. 26 Northwest Oregon Conference district meet, closed out a stellar cross country career at HRV. She won the 2021 Intermountain Conference individual title and then led the Eagles to fourth place at state, where she was eighth overall. She was third in the IMC district meet during the abbreviated 2020 COVID season.
Nickson had similar success for Hood River. In her first season on the team as a junior in 2021, Nickson dropped her personal best for 5,000 by three minutes, finishing sixth at the IMC district meet and 30th at state for HRV’s trophy-winning girls team.
Summit won the 2022 5A girls team championship with 36 points. The Bend school has won a girls state team title 14 successive seasons (the meet has been held) at either the 5A or 6A level.
Commented
Sorry, there are no recent results for popular commented articles.