Medical Lake finishes ninth at 1A state cross country

To win at state in cross country means you have to get there first.

When reaching Pasco, running fast and finishing strong is the difference.

Medical Lake got the first box checked, but then ran out of ink last Saturday on the 5,000-meter Sun Willows Golf Course layout where the Cardinals finished ninth behind team champion Lakeside, their Northeast A League rivals.

The Eagles swept both boys and girls team titles. They tied with Cascade of Leavenworth with 113 points, the deadlock broken on the basis of the better finishing No. 6 runner. Medical Lake ended with 223 points. Lakeside's girls won 108-114 over Kings.

The Cardinals were the defending 2017 1A state champions and winners of other titles in 2013 and 2014 with second-place finishes in 2015 and 2016.

"I'm really pleased with our season," Blankenship said. "I'm completely satisfied with the kids efforts. We just did not put everything together at the state meet."

Medical Lake got matching 38th place finishes from both its top boys runner, sophomore Quintin Collins, and their only girls runner, freshman Allison Payne.

Collins clocked a 17-minute, 28.40 second time, 1:07 back of Adam Briejer of Charles Wright Academy who was the top boys finisher. Collins had been hampered by an injury and had fallen back in recent varsity finishes. Victor Long was three places behind at 17:32.10.

Head coach Gene Blankenship said Collins' return to the top for his team was impressive but failed to take the spotlight away from Payne.

"If I had to say who had the best race of the day it would be Allison," Blankenship said. "Quintin had the second-best race."

Payne's finish earned her a place on the Medical Lake state record wall, despite it being close to 3/4ths of a second slower. "This course is so much tougher. The original record is 19:50 (set in 2014 by Mariah Pena), but that's on the old course," Blankenship said.

Medical Lake had the second fastest total team time or "spread" - 40 seconds from No. 1 through No. 5 - but unfortunately the group was just a bit too far back in the mass of 163 1A boys runners. "The only team better was University Prep at 30 seconds and they were sixth," Blankenship said.

Spreads are an important factor for every team.

"It gives you an indication how you are running as a team," he said. "In essence we didn't have a bad team race, it just wasn't fast enough to move up any further."

Blankenship shouldered the blame for what was a lower than anticipated finish Saturday.

"I want to admit this straight up," Blankenship said. "I made a big coaching mistake in our training."

He did not realize that the new course design at Pasco and Sun Willows Golf Course was going to be as hilly as it was. "We should have been training later into the season on our hills," Blankenship said.

Blankenship described the course as "Tremendously different," he said. "You were either coming up or down the entire course." The cross country coaches association made suggestions to change the course from the past.

Five of the seven state qualifiers should return in 2019 and include freshman Angel Mendez (83/17:55.20), junior Jeremiah Windle (103/18:08.90) and Ben Henry, a sophomore, (108/18:16.40). Zach Lewis (78th/17:53.10) and Nicholas Henry (121/18:30.60) the only grads.

Maybe even bigger news comes from down the pipeline where the Medical Lake Middle School team won its league title with a handful of those runners expected to run.

Blankenship, who is 76, but turns 77 next February, already has plans to see those runners progress at helping Medical Lake return to the podium at Pasco. "I'm committed for the next four years, for sure, unless the school decides to get rid of me," he said.

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