At the beginning of the 2015 season, Cheney High School cross country coach Derek Slaughter wasn’t sure what he had in his Blackhawks boys team.
By the time season’s end came at state competition on the green fairway grass of Pasco’s Sun Willows Golf Course, Cheney’s first-year head coach couldn’t wait to get the 2016 campaign underway.
The emergence of the Blackhawks has landed them in the No. 5 slot of the Cheney Free Press Top 10 stories of 2015. The young and inexperienced Cheney squad made the best of their talents on the running circuit virtually from the start.
The team’s strength was its junior class, which showed after a third-place finish in the junior boys race at the Highlander Invitational Sept. 12, led by top-20 finishes from Drake Johnson (fifth), Matt Christianson (11th) and Kaleb Lerch (19th). The trio were regularly in the top-5 scoring runners at meets for Cheney throughout the season, with fellow junior Jack Peabody, freshman Tucker Cunningham along with seniors Luke Huguenin and Ryan Axtell rounding out the varsity seven and playing key roles at times in the team’s success.
The Blackhawks success continued with a third-place finish at the Coeur d’Alene Super One Invitational Sept. 26, and a second-place finish at the William Johnson Sandpoint Invitational Oct. 10. In between these meets, the Blackhawks ran the table in Great Northern League competition, opening with a win over pre-season league champion favorite East Valley (Sept. 16) and ending with a regular-season, title-clinching performance at Pullman to finish 4-0.
It was the first time the Blackhawks boys finished atop the GNL since 2007 when they shared honors with West Valley and Colville. And they weren’t done.
At District 7 competition in Clarkston Oct. 24, Cheney turned in a tight, 35-second spread between its No. 1 and No. 5 runners to capture the boys first ever district title. Johnson placed third overall, followed by Christianson in fifth, Lerch eighth, Peabody ninth and senior Mason VanStone 17th.
The win landed Cheney a spot in the regional meet in Ellensburg with teams from the Central Washington Athletic Conference Oct. 31. This time, Cheney used a 40-second gap between scoring runners to punch their ticket to Pasco, finishing second behind Selah and just ahead of GNL rival Pullman.
At Sun Willows, the Blackhawks turned in a respectable showing — providing hints of a possible future — by finishing seventh overall. Four of the varsity’s seven runners turned in season-best times.
Their success this past season has led to the runners and their coach setting the off-season workout bar a little higher, and the establishment of a new goal — a trophy at state in 2016.
John McCallum can be reached at [email protected].
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