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By PAUL DELANEY
Staff Reporter 

Cardinals after CC crown

Medical Lake is after first NEA boys’ title since 1987

 

Last updated 10/25/2013 at 9:53am



Medical Lake’s top-ranked 1A boys’ cross country team kept within striking range of earning their first Northeast A League championship in over a quarter century scoring an easy 16-43 win at home last Tuesday over Chewelah.

Medical Lake’s girls won an equally impressive 15-47 win on their home 5,000 meter course.

This past Tuesday the teams – the boys a perfect 4-0 and the girls 2-2 – traveled to Bear Lake County Park for their final NEA meet with league-leading Riverside, 5-0 in boys’ and Kettle Falls (1-6).

“We have the big one Tuesday,” Blankenship said of the race against the Rams. He was confident of the Cardinals’ chances.

“We have five guys running faster than their first guy,” Blankenship said. “But that doesn’t mean anything, we’re running at their home course, it’s got a lot of blacktop on it and it’s more like a road run.” The Riverside course does two loops around Bear Lake in North Spokane County near Chattaroy.


Quick research offered by ML athletics director, Chris Spring, says the school’s last boys’ cross country championship came in 1987.

In last Tuesday’s meet Blankenship said the overall solid performance by both of his teams was impressive. But more importantly were the personal records and course record.

“A PR on our course is almost impossible,” Blankenship said. “It’s tough because of so many turns and long grass.”

Domenic Rehm set the course record with a time of 16 minutes, 54 seconds, “Running all by himself,” and bested the previous record by one second. Rehm finished 37 seconds ahead of Jacob Dingfield.


Maleeka Wegner paced the girls sweep on the top-4 spots with a 21:16. Kaylin Sattler was second at 21:22 and Bradyn Wegner third (22:42)

Abigale Morrison caught Chewelah’s Savanna Blain near the finish with her 23:30 giving the Cards four of the top five finishes

“They have one boy (Quenton Smith), and one girl (Savanna Blain), that ran pretty good, actually,” Blankenship said.

Smith broke up the team’s dominant finish with a fifth place. Otherwise the Cardinals would have swept the top five spots. “He broke us up by a couple of seconds,” Blankenship said.

Paul Delaney can be reached at pdelaney@cheneyfreepress.com.

 

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