Cardinal girls, boys, bring home solid finishes at Nike Pre Nats

This past Saturday in Portland, Medical Lake head cross country coach Gene Blankenship and his team got to see what the future just might look like come November at the state championships.

Both the Cardinal boys and girls ran at the Nike Pre Nationals at the Portland Meadows horse race track and earned some impressive finishes — and got to scout their most likely toughest competition in Pasco.

The Medical Lake girls surprised everyone with their runner-up finish to multi-time Oregon state champions, St. Mary’s in the Division 3 varsity division, losing 132-142. Meanwhile the Cardinal boys finished sixth in the Division 1 varsity division with 216 points. Champion Redondo Union from Redondo Beach, Calif. was first with 111 points.

Point totals for the meet were much higher than the usual for a meet but that’s because of the number of teams, about 100, and athletes at the race, Blankenship explained.

“We ran exceptionally well,” Blankenship said. “The guys weren’t happy with their times.” Medical Lake had six personal records (PRs) in the 5,000 meters on the boys’ side and four for the girls.

St. Mary’s of Oregon was augmented by the arrival of Minnesota transfer Marissa Dobry who won the individual portion of the race in a time of 18 minutes, 50.6 seconds. Medical Lake’s Mariah Pena ran a 20:16.1 to finish fifth. Maleeka Wegner’s 20:47.7 was the Cardinals’ other top-10 finisher.

Sophomore Michaela Peterson, who was 72nd overall, established a PR by better than one minute while running the course for the first time. Junior Bradyn Wegner, however, showed the biggest improvement bettering her time on the course by some seven minutes from that of her freshman year.

Domenic Rehm clocked a 16:25.7 to finish 15th for the ML boys. Carlos Suarez won the individual championship in a time of 15:49.4 for Redondo.

“Dom was sick last week so he’s still recovering, but he ran a heck of a race,” Blankenship said. If Rehm had not been ill Blankenship figured he would have finished in the top-five. Jacob Dingfield was 19th at 16:36.7.

Blankenship likes the progress he’s seen in Micah Dingfield, who has been slowly working himself into form after battling a nagging injury suffered last season. “Micah’s coming on like gangbusters,” Blankenship said. “He’s getting better every week,” finishing 29th in a time of 16:45.1.

The boys had wanted to compete in the elite Danner Division but Blankenship wanted the team to be able to run on a more even footing.

Racing where they did provided the benefit of Medical Lake being able to run against 1A challenger Northwest Prep, a private boarding school near Seattle currently ranked No. 2 behind Medical Lake in the state poll.

“They went 1-2-3 on us,” Blankenship said and finished 13th with 352 points. When and if they meet at state, Blankenship said, “We have to break up their top-3, no doubt about it.”

Next up for the Cardinals is their first Northeast A League meet, which took place this past Wednesday when they hosted Chewelah. Saturday is the Curtis Invitational in Tacoma where the bar is once again set quite high.

“We’re not going to see any strong 1A teams but we’re going to see some strong 3A and 4A teams,” Blankenship said.

Paul Delaney can be reached at [email protected].