Girls cross country team falls short

The Outlaws girls cross country team concluded its season with an unexpected third-place finish at the District Championships, ending its run for another state trophy.

Sisters was unable to overcome a number of challenges at the end of the season, including an injury to top runner Nathalie Tresseras.

Marist scored 44 points, Cottage Grove 46 and Sisters 53 in the race for the two state qualifying berths. Despite all seven Outlaws runners finishing well ahead of Cottage Grove's fifth runner, Sisters couldn't overcome the 1-2 finish by the Lions' top two runners.

"It's frustrating to know that at the state meet we would finish ahead of Cottage Grove, probably as high as fourth or fifth, because of our depth," said Kanzig. "Still, you have to be good enough to be first or second and we couldn't quite pull that off."

The problem for the Outlaws stemmed from there only being five complete teams and only 30 scoring runners at the district meet.

"The point totals stay really close among teams since even if you have a slow scorer, they still might finish 25th," Kanzig explained.

Emi Conrads finished third (20:28) and Kirsten Clarke seventh (21:42) to qualify as individuals.

"It will be a good experience for these two to run at the state meet again after being part of last year's second-place team at state," said Kanzig.

Hayley Palmer ran her personal best (22:01) to finish 12th, and Tresseras, despite having not run in a month, held on for 14th place in 22:02. Claire Kanzig completed the scoring (22:59), finishing in 21st place, just ahead of Jordan Richerson (23:09) and Courtney Johnson (23:17).

"The girls ran as hard as they could, knowing the race would be really tight," said Kanzig. "I think we will be hungry to make it back to state in 2009, since five of the seven girls are back along with a slew of junior varsity runners, including Nicolle Meadors who won the junior varsity district title."

Conrads and Clarke race at 11:25 a.m. Saturday, November 1 at Lane Community College in Eugene.