PASCO — Gig Harbor ran away with the 4A boys cross country championship on Saturday, finishing with the top three runners overall.
But after the Tides the field was largely open for the taking.
In the end, Jackson finished a respectable eighth place, though a higher finish was certainly possible.
“(It’s) slightly disappointing,” Timberwolves head coach Eric Hruschka said. “It’s a little bit off. With a great race we thought we could be fourth and get a trophy or we could slide back to about eighth and that’s the back end of that pack about 20 points back of where we probably could have been.”
The Timberwolves can’t be too disappointed. It was their eighth consecutive top-10 finish at state.
“It’s a real credit to everybody that’s in our program, our parents and coaches and athletes in the program,” Hruschka said. “They buy into what we’re doing. We always say on a bad year we want to be top-10 and rebuilding and on a good year we want to be challenging for a trophy. I think we’re right there.”
Jackson junior Aaron Roe was the top scorer for the Timberwolves finishing with a time of 15:42.35 in 13th place. He was the second highest local finisher behind Edmonds-Woodway junior Miler Haller, who finished with a time of 15:30.86.
All of the Wesco 4A teams faced a bit of a disadvantage after the Bi-District meet that was to be held at Lincoln Park in West Seattle had to be postponed because of weather. The meet didn’t take place until Monday and had to be moved to Sammamish State Park in Issaquah.
“We ran really hard on Monday on the guys side to try to win district,” Hruschka said. “The kids are tougher than parents. The young kids respond better than us old coaches. Some kids did really well with it and some didn’t.”
Other than Roe, Jadon Olson, Tristan Taylor, Connor Willgress and James Henry round out the runners who scored for the Timberwolves. The Kamiak boys placed 15th.
Lakewood stumbles
The Lakewood team came into the 2A state meet on Saturday with a No. 1 ranking by the coaches and high hopes for a trophy, but left with a disappointing ninth place finish well behind first-place Sehome.
Lakewood finished with 206 points comfortably ahead of 10th place Ellensburg, but 26 points behind Cheney.
Junior Douglas Davis was the Cougars’ highest finisher, coming in 17th in 16:20.10.
Cedarcrest finished third as a team aided by senior Logan Orndorf, who finished fifth in 15:50.40.
Knights’ Ayers second
King’s junior Andrew Ayers came in second in the 1A meet with a time of 15:53. He was less than two seconds behind Northwest’s Graham Peet who took home the championship.
Ayers also helped the Knights to a fifth place finish.
Aaron Lommers covers prep sports for The Herald. Follow him on twitter @aaronlommers and contact him at alommers@heraldnet.com.
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