The King’s girls cross country team lived up to its season-long No. 2 billing at last weekend’s state championships in Pasco.
Making their debut appearance in the Class 2A race, the Knights held off Chelan for second place behind defending champion East Valley (Yakima).
Laura Coghlan and Melody Miles each cracked the overall top 30 and the next three King’s runners completed the 3.1-mile race in rapid-fire succession Nov. 6 at Sun Willows Golf Course.
Coghlan took 25th in a time of 20 minutes, 31 seconds and Miles was four seconds back in 29th. Lauren Thompson was 37th in 20:51, Heidi Peterson (20:55) was 40th and Heidi Kieling (20:58) was 41st.
“They stuck together and ran as a team,” Knights coach Rod Wilcox said.
Only Kieling showed a substantial improvement from the previous week’s race, trimming 20 seconds off her district time.
“That was her best race of the year and we needed it,” Wilcox said. “If she hadn’t pulled it off, we wouldn’t have gotten second.”
Thompson’s time was just one second faster than her district mark and Coghlan, Miles and Peterson weren’t able to duplicate their district pace.
The sheer size and speed of the field seemed to overwhelm the Knights, who claimed 1A/B championships the past three years before moving up in classification.
Twice as many teams compete in the 2A girls race as the 1A/B event and the caliber of the competition caught the King’s runners by surprise.
“They were thrown off by the quality of everyone,” Wilcox said. “They didn’t feel like they were ever in the race.”
East Valley placed four runners in the top 25 to lock up the team title with 59 points, followed by King’s (112), Cashmere (119), Port Townsend (156) and Mount Baker (162).
CROUTWORST SHINES: Alex Croutworst closed out his King’s career by finishing eighth in the 2A boys race in a time of 16:43.
The fourth-ranked Knights slipped to sixth in the team standings. It was the their lowest state finish since taking eighth in 1998.
“We learned exactly how good 2A teams are,” Wilcox said. “We know we can compete with any of them, but it’s a much tougher pool to play in.”
Croutworst improved on last year’s state meet showing by eight places and was the only King’s runner to finish in the top 30.
“He’s had a great progression, going from the No. 5 runner on the middle school team to as high as eighth in the state,” Wilcox said.
Slowed by a nagging knee injury, Brent Woodham took 37th in 17:28. Evan Dull (17:34) was 44th, Jeff Dull (17:43) was 59th and Brian Pflugrath (18:03) was 78th.
“You can’t ask for much better from our guys,” Wilcox said. “The 2A race was even tougher than we thought it would be.”
Five seconds was all that separated the average times of the teams that finished third through eighth.
East Valley (Yakima) took the team title by placing its first five in the top 50 for a total of 109 points. Top-ranked Lakewood (125) was second, followed by Lakeside (125), Cashmere (139), Colville (157) and King’s (169).
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