Cardinal boys win league XC title

MEDICAL LAKE - Medical Lake head cross country coach Gene Blankenship walked away from the Northeast A championships staged April 9 pretty much the way he approached them.

Overall Blankenship was not surprised.

The Cardinal boys prevailed over Lakeside on their 5,000-meter home course while the ML girls lost to the Eagle ladies.

It was what happened inside those two races that had the veteran coach quietly smiling.

Just six days earlier Medical Lake and Lakeside hooked up in a Northeast A dual meet on the course that crisscrosses the campus. The Cardinals emerged with a tense 23-26 win over the Eagles.

"You know we only beat them by three points in our dual meet last week and so I figured that this was going to be close," Blankenship said. "The boys wouldn't have anything of it." ML's 24 points beat Lakeside 41. Riverside finished with 69, Deer Park 118 and Newport 127. Neither Colville nor Freeman fielded full teams.

With no one about to catch Riverside junior Jamar Distel - he won by 52 seconds in a time of 16 minutes, 21.81 seconds - the Medical Lake trio of Ben Henry, Quintin Collins and Reid Headrick put it on themselves to not make this race close. Henry (17:13.65/2nd), Collins (17:14.65/3rd) and Headrick (17:21.83/4th) finished in a tightly ordered pack separated by less than 8 seconds.

"We ended up going to 2-3-4 and 1-2-3 on Lakeside's No. 1," Blankenship explained. "Lakeside had two guys come in and then our other two boys came in," referencing Connor Palmen (17:40.38/7th) and Kyler Castro (17:43.51/8th). Sam Ornelas (18:54.55/13th) and Aden Carl (20:15.13/20th) completed the ML finishers.

"Sam Ornelas had probably won his best races of the season and he actually squeezed into the 13th place and got on the podium, so we put six guys on the podium," Blankenship said.

Blankenship travels around the course at races to see how his runners are faring, and he admitted at one point "I got a little carried away."

That's because, "With about half a mile ago, maybe a little less, we had a short possibility a perfect scoring Lakeside," meaning having five runners finish in a row. "Two (Lakeside) boys took down my fourth and fifth guy."

On the girl's side of competition where Medical Lake lost 22-33 to Lakeside the Cardinals had a strong finish from No. 1 runner, Kayla Ramsey whose 20:47.37 was third behind winner Makaylie Stockert (Lakeside, 20:26.56) and Deer Park's Layne Lathrop (20:31.56).

"Ramsey battled the girl from Deer Park and Lakeside for almost an entire race," Blankenship said. "She just got a little bit outkicked." Overall Medical Lake had four runners finish in the top 14. Katie Hiatt (22:51.61/8th), Jenna Castro (23:23.36/11), Paige Headrick (24:06.37/14th), Allison Payne (24:07.82/12th) and Grace Grubaugh (24:25.26/14th).

"We had three girls come in together that were just a few seconds behind their fifth (place finisher)," Blankenship said. "If we put those three girls in front of their fifth. It would have been a really tight score."

Lakeside won the team title 22-33 over Medical Lake, the only other school which fielded a team.

While there are no official state championships, the cross-country coaches association are sponsoring their version of a state meet. That took place this past Tuesday (April 13) for girls and Wednesday (April 14) for boys at participating schools.

Finishes will be recorded and sent to one of the sponsors who will enter data into a spreadsheet, number crunch and arrive with a result to be released later.

Paul Delaney is a retired Free Press Publishing reporter and can be reached at [email protected].