Medical Lake sweeps Riverside

Medical Lake's cross country teams continued to do things they have not done in the past in Northeast A League competition following a sweep of Riverside in a boys' and girls' dual meet at home on Oct. 4.

The Cardinal girls shocked Riverside for their second program-defining victory in a week, topping the Rams 26-29 while the boys took a 22-35 win.

For the girls, who had beaten Deer Park the week before for the first time in 1A competition, they did it again with their initial win over Riverside.

"No doubt about it, we had another good Wednesday; that's two weeks in a row," head coach Gene Blankenship said.

Riverside's Lizzy Shaw was the top individual in a time of 20 minutes, 24.62 seconds, but it was the consistency shown by Medical Lake in the rest of the top-10 that allowed them to pull out the win.

Riley Olmstead of Medical Lake was second at 21:01.55 and played the pivotal role in the win, Blankenship said.

"Riley did her job again," (against Riverside) her coach explained. "We were running against one of the best runners in the state (Lizzy Shaw). Her job (Olmstead) was to break up their two (1-2 runners) and she did that," on the 5,000-meter course.

Freshman Maris Tuck also excelled with a third place (21:09.15) finish.

"She just had the race of a lifetime," Blankenship said of Tuck's outing against Riverside. She followed that with another stellar performance on Saturday at the Hole In The Wall Invitational at Lakewood High School near Marysville. Tuck was the top finisher for the Cardinals - 29th overall -in a time of 20:50. Kings' High School's Naomi Smith won with an 18:53.4.

After Tuck, Riverside had two girls finish ahead of the Cardinals third-place runner, Jenavieve Cogswell (22:20.62) but she led a pack of ML finishers in the next two spots, including Paige Headrick (22:33.71) and Kaylee Thompson (22:37.75).

"That made the difference." Blankenship said.

In the boys' race against Riverside, Medical Lake was missing their top runner, Mason Williams, who was sick the day of the meet and missed school. "I was concerned about that, totally concerned," Blankenship said.

Riverside's Ben Shaw (Lizzy's brother) turned in a 17:08.65, but the rest of the race belonged to Medical Lake. Tyler Pena's 17:14.27 was good for second with Evan Peterson (17:27.71), Quintin Collins (17:47.11 PR) and Tanner Henry (17:51.81) finishing 2-3-4-5, sealing the win.

In the Saturday race, Medical Lake's boys won the Division II team title over Arlington 107-151 with Cheney No. 8 at 288 points. The Cardinals had 13 PRs.

Pena's 16:09.9 led the division's finishers, followed by Williams' 16:16.3. With the help of Tuck's finish, the girls were 13th as a team in the race that attracted an estimated 1,300 runners.

The Cardinals were at Lakeside Oct. 11 and finish league competition at Colville on Oct. 17. Both teams are undefeated in NEA competition.

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