Columbia High’s girls and boys cross country teams are going back to the WIAA 1A state meet in Pasco this Saturday.
The two teams punched their tickets for a return trip last Saturday at the South-west District championships on the Lewis River Golf Course in Woodland.
The CHS boys failed to defend their district title but still qualified for state, thanks to a second-place finish behind Forks. The top three teams and top 15 individuals in the 5,000-meter district final earned berths to state (top four teams, top 20 individuals on the girls side).
CHS’s girls, led by sophomore Haley Blair’s runner-up finish, claimed third place by 27 points over Seton Catholic of Vancouver.
Junior Colin Howe ran at the front for the CHS boys and captured fifth place overall with a season’s best 5km time of 17 minutes, 32 seconds.
All told, all seven CHS boys in the district final placed in the top 30 (in a field of 88). Four of them posted personal-record 5km times, and two ran season’s best times.
Senior Isaac Black (17th, 18:38) and freshman Ethan Andres (18th, 18:40) both logged PRs, as did sophomores Danial Lemmon (23rd, 18:50) and James Bell (30th, 18:59). Sophomore Declan Liddiard (28th, 18:55) ran a season’s best time, while ailing junior Will Nuckoles managed to finish 25th in a subpar time (18:53) for him.
Nuckoles has been fighting a cold and was under the weather when he ran last Saturday. Still, his placing was good enough to help put CHS in position to earn yet another a state berth.
The Bruins finished with a score of 88, which was 15 behind Forks and seven a-head of third place La Center.
Forks won the competition by placing its top five runners among the first 26 to cross the finish line. La Center managed to place four runners in the first 30 and five in the first 36.
Kalama junior Jarod Hulsizer won his first district crown, pulling away from last year’s winner and third-place finisher, Wesley Allen of Elma and Alan Ensastegui of Forks, respectively, for a 21-second margin of victory. Hulsizer was second in 2014.
“We knew Forks was the team to beat,” Bruins Coach Jill Cole said. “They had a pack a bit stronger than ours and ran a good race.”
The Bruins’ pack, for its part, ran a strategically smart race on a course made soggy by the week’s heavy rain. Still, said, Cole is was a fast course that played to CHS’s strength in numbers.
“They had an amazing second half of their race where they kept picking off runners who had gone out too fast.”
CHS runners moved up throughout the race and pushed themselves in their effort to defend their title.
“With almost everyone running a season best, we gave it all we had and ran to our potential,” Cole said.
Blair finished in 20:38, 10 seconds off her PR set during the second race of this season on Sept. 16.
Sophomore Andrea Ochoa came in 15th in a PR time (by 44 seconds) of 22:11.
Rounding out the Bruins’ scoring unit were sophomore Rachel Luther (17th, 22:27), senior Sidra Matthias (26th, season’s best 24:04 by 1:11), and senior Jessica Ewers (41st in a PR of 25:51; -0.41 improvement).
Seniors Melissa Fortanel (43rd, 26:07) and Kyzlen Stein (44th, season’s best time of 26:09) also competed for CHS as part of a 55-runner field.
Columbia, however, did not have the legs to compete with front-runners La Center and Eatonville. In the final issue, La Center edged Eatonville, 53 to 55, for the title, after scoring was adjusted to exclude runners from incomplete teams.
Jenna Melanson of La Center won her first district title, finishing strong in a time of 19:42, which was her fourth-fastest 5km race of the season.
Both La Center and Eatonville made for a close finish by placing their first five runners in the top 23.
“Haley [Blair] was determined to be runner-up in her race and fought hard the whole race to achieve that,” Cole said. “She is a tough competitor and her strong work ethic is paying off.”
Cole also had praise for Ewers. “Jessica had an amazing race, moving up to be our fifth runner. She was key to our success on Saturday and has been an inspiration to the rest of the team all season.”
This Saturday, the two CHS teams will be running for honors at the WIAA 1A state championships at Sun Willows Golf Course in Pasco. The girls race starts at 10:30 a.m. The boys race begins at noon.
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