The Wahkiakum County Eagle - Established as The Skamokawa Eagle in 1891

Mule cross country Coach Marie Riley was out of town this week, Heidi Heywood filled in and filed this report:

Wahkiakum harriers capitalized on the last day of fall sunshine on October 11 at a meet hosted by Tenino. Tenino’s course was the second most challenging of the season thus far, but several runners posted some of their best times of the season.

Middle school girls ran together with the boys in a total field of 59 runners. Shona Heywood had a very strong run, passing many runners on the course’s single steep hill to place third in the girls’ race, and finishing ahead of two-thirds of the boys. Teammate Mya Kirzy placed a strong fourth in the girls’ race. Mya’s and Shona’s low scores, coupled with Aly Kirzy and Trynity Mendez’s very solid 15th and 17th place finishes and Katie Stacey’s respectable 26th combined for the Warriors’ 65 points. The girls finished second overall, behind only Montesano, a larger 1-A size school.

High school girls competed in a small but especially strong field of 29 runners. Rory Heywood finished 12th, Jenna McEntire 20th, and Shelbie Abbott 22nd. Jenna posted one of her best times of the season, and her strongest finish overall considering course terrain. Shelbie Abbott was coming off a significant illness but ran a very smart race for one of her season’s best efforts as well.

Luke Stacey, running as the sole Mule boy, finished 54th in a field of 75 runners. He achieved his all-time personal best time of 22:00.9 for a 5,000 meter cross country course, an improvement of over nine seconds. This was especially impressive because he achieved it on one of the area’s most challenging courses.

The Mules and Warriors compete in the league meet today (Thursday) at Mossyrock. The district meet is October 27 at Evergreen State College.