Medical Lake wins CC showdown with Deer Park

The big Northeast A League cross country showdown went just as Medical Lake head coach Gene Blankenship boldly predicted it would at the beginning of the season.

His look into the future back in August allowed Blankenship to think his team would most likely claim another regular-season title, even with the addition of former 2A powerhouse, Deer Park to the NEA.

With Cardinal runners sweeping the top three spots, Medical Lake earned a 24-31 win over Deer Park and a 24-81 victory over Freeman. Seniors Domenic Rehm and Micah Dingfield finished in a dead-heat, each crossing the finish line in 16 minutes, 47 seconds with junior Jacob Dingfield a second back at 16:48.

The Medical Lake boys successfully defended its league crown finishing a perfect 7-0. Deer Park was 6-1.

"It's nice to win the dual meet championship two years in a row for the boys," Blankenship said.

But there was a bonus for Blankenship who watched the girls score an upset victory 35-42 over the Stags and 35-45 against Freeman.

That win by the girls was paced by Mariah Pena's third place, a time of 20:47 as she led two teammates, Sakaiya McCoy (21:01) and Maleeka Wegner (21:05) across the finish line on the 5,000-meter course.

Deer Park's Moriah Duenich was the top female finisher at 19:19.

"What's even more exciting is to get second place in the dual-meet championship with the girls," Blankenship said of his team that finished 6-1.

In the boys' race, the Cardinals' trio started strong and somewhere after the one-mile mark put in a surge to distance themselves from the pack of Deer Park runners. "They just ran together the rest of the race," on a rainy, miserable day, Blankenship said.

For both district and state competition there needs to be some improvement. Blankenship said that his 4-5-6 runners need to step it up in today's (Oct. 30) district meet at the Chewelah golf course.

"They just got outkicked by the Deer Park kids," Blankenship said. "We were really close to going 1-5 again," he explained, saying freshman Mason Williams finished eighth at 17:19 and Noah Kroeze 10th at 17:27.

Deer Park's Kody Turner clocked a 17:08 to lead their 4-7 finish.

"If they do that to us at districts we could be in trouble," Blankenship said.

The girls' race at districts looks like it will be between Medical Lake and Deer Park, both of whom will trail likely champ, Lakeside.

"Lakeside's going to run away with it unless they have a real bad race," Blankenship said. Outside of the top-two team finishers, 10 other finishers earn their way to Pasco, Nov. 8.

Paul Delaney can be reached at [email protected].