The Dalles sweeps cross country meet at Heppner

HEPPNER — The Dalles High School cross country teams swept the girls and boys races Oct. 2 at the Mustang Invite hosted by Heppner High.

The Dalles girls edged host Heppner, 28-31, while the Riverhawk boys won, 30-62, over Riverside — one of eight scoring teams in the boys race.

Individually, the top runners for The Dalles were Abigail Pope and Alessandra Meza in the 5,000-meter girls race. Pope was third in 21 minutes, 29 seconds followed by Meza in fourth in 21:34 (personal best). The Riverhawks’ team scorers had fairly good bunching in the race, as Laura Black, Kestley Hodges and Josie Brace (PR, 22:26) finished sixth, seventh and eighth — within eight seconds of each other starting at 22:18.

The Dalles boys were led by senior Tyson Long, who was third in 16:49. Zeb Stelzer (PR, 17:03), Luke Sorenson (38-second PR, 17:08), and Aiden Erickson were fifth, sixth and seventh, and Noah Preston completed The Dalles’ team score in ninth. Of note was Lazarus Taylor’s 24-second PR in 10th place at 18:03.

Also of note was the fact that this is the third successive race in which The Dalles’ girls squad has had a different No. 1 runner, starting with Black on Sept. 20, then Flamingo Duyck on Sept. 26 to Pope this past week.