Rex Putnam’s Noemi Lundgren (909) and Hood River’s Phoebe Wood (882) go stride-for-stride to the finish of the girls 5,000 meter race on Oct. 12. Wood finished 00.1 seconds ahead of Lundgren for first place overall.
Rex Putnam’s Noemi Lundgren (909) and Hood River’s Phoebe Wood (882) go stride-for-stride to the finish of the girls 5,000 meter race on Oct. 12. Wood finished 00.1 seconds ahead of Lundgren for first place overall.
Hood River Valley’s cross country runners competed on tired legs this past week, as most ran in two races , the final two preps before the upcoming Northwest Oregon Conference championship meet on Oct. 25.
The Eagles hosted three conference schools Oct. 12 on their home course, which meanders around the athletic fields on campus and down along the adjacent Indian Creek trail. Three days later, HRV headed to McIver Park near Estacada where it competed in the large, 42-school Lewis & Clark XC Invitational.
Coach Brandon Bertram is fine-tuning his district meet lineups, as runners jostle for top seven spots on the Eagle varsity. With that comes expectations, built solely on the successful history of the program. On the other hand, Bertram’s moniker this time of the season is to keep things as upbeat and positive as possible.
“All the hard work is done. They’ve done the work; they know that,” he said. “Our tapering is reminding them of what they’ve accomplished in practice” — some since track season ended in June. “My tapering style isn’t really tapering training it’s keeping the atmosphere and the kids upbeat. … I am the largest purveyor of positivity the next week and a half.”
If Bertram has a concern, it’s getting his runners over the ongoing viruses that ebb and flow through school hallways this time of the fall, sometimes seemingly — similar to HRV’s loop course — like they’re circling around more than once.
“We are getting healthy. We are fully trained and prepared,” the coach said. “And now it’s just rest. They have had a great training season and now our job is to just freshen up.”
HRV runners won the individual races at the home meet. Senior Phoebe Wood came from behind to win the girls 5,000-meter race by the slimmest of margins, 21:18.7 to 21:18.8, over Putnam’s Noemi Lundgren. Wood’s senior teammate, Olivia Nickson, was fourth in 21:28.7, and Eagle runners also crossed the finish line sixth, seventh and eighth, and 10 through 14.
Senior Elliot Hawley won the boys 5,000-meter race in 17:01, and sophomore teammate Logan King was fourth in 18:19. The Eagle boys couldn’t match Canby’s depth, as the Cougar runners finished second and fifth through eight and won the four-team race with 28 points.
The Eagle girls were sixth in the meet at McIver Park, which included 16 scoring varsity teams of varying sizes. Wood and Nickson finished ninth and tenth, separated by a second. Sophomore Alex Bronson, junior Cristine Kinoshita, and frosh Charlotte Fuller each ran season bests to complete the HRV scoring.
Hawley was 16th to lead the HRV boys efforts at the Lewis & Clark meet. Sophomore Kai Wagner ran a personal best in 17:34 and finished 51st.
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