Hood River Valley will host a cross country meet for the first time in a year and a half on Wednesday.
Canby, Parkrose, and Putnam will gather at the high school and tackle the 5,000-meter course, which meanders around the HRV athletic complex fields and nearby Indian Creek Trail. The girls race begins at 4 p.m. and the boys at 4:40 p.m.
Parkrose, Putnam and HRV also have meets this weekend, so depending on workout schedules, their runners may be training through the mid-week meet.
The boys race should include three of the top six runners — each of them seniors — in the Northwest Oregon Conference: Elliot Hawley of HRV, Marte Hailey of Parkrose, and Maddox Oliver of Canby. Their season-best times are within six seconds of each other. Hawley bested Oliver by 14 seconds the last time the two matched up in a meet — Oct. 1 at the Champoeg Invite. Hawley was seventh and Oliver tenth.
A month ago at the NWOC preview meet at Blue Lake Park in Portland, the three runners finished 4-5-6 — Hawley, Hailey and Oliver — within four seconds of each other.
In boys team competition, Hood River figures to have a leg up on the three visiting schools based on season results. Wilsonville continues to be the top-ranked NWOC boys team, with the district meet now two weeks away.
On the girls side, six of the top seven district runners are from teams competing at HRV this week. Putnam senior Naomi Lundgren has won three of the six races she has entered this fall; she was second in her latest meet, the 55-team Harrier Classic on Oct. 1 in Albany. Upstart MacKenzie Bigej of Canby has competed just once this season, at the Champoeg meet, where she was second in 18:43 — the fifth fastest time in Class 5A this fall.
HRV counters with seniors Olivia Nickson and Phoebe Wood, and frosh Syl Perrin, the fourth-, seventh- and fifth-ranked runners in the NWOC. The Eagles are the top-ranked girls team in the NWOC, with their team depth apparent in the season-best time list. Among the top 30 girls times this season in the nine-school league, 12 are from HRV.
Hood River will also compete Saturday at McIver State Park near Estacada in the Lewis & Clark XC Invitational. The NWOC championship meet is Wednesday, Oct. 26 at Blue Lake Park.
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