The Lakers post one of their best team finishes of the year at Tualatin
Lake Oswego’s girls cross country team left its mark.
The Lakers, competing in the Three Rivers League meet at Tualatin High School on Wednesday, Sept. 28, stepped up to finish first in the field of seven with 58 points. And they did it with senior Kate Peters — the reigning Class 6A state champion — on the shelf with an injury.
The complete team scoring included: Lake Oswego 58, Tigard 63, Lakeridge 69, West Linn 111, St Mary’s Academy 114, Oregon City 133, Tualatin 141.
The Lakers built their win on the success of sophomore Ana Peters — she won the 5-kilometer race with a personal-best time of 18 minutes, 0.9 seconds — a top-10 finish by sophomore Sofie Howard and three more top-17 finishes.
“I’m pretty happy about that,” Peters said of her win. “It’s totally my best race this season so that’s good.”
Peters ran close behind Tigard junior Sabine Kim for the first two miles of the race, but when she saw an opportunity, she took and left Kim far behind in second at 18:29.4.
“I was just going to chill behind her for as long as possible, but then a little bit after two miles, she was breathing pretty hard so I thought I’d go. I had to make a good move — I didn’t want her to pass me back.”
In addition to Peters’ efforts, Kim finished ninth overall at 19:378.6, followed by sophomore Noelle Plasse (15th with a PR of 20:02.4), sophomore Joelle Thompson (16th at 20:09.9) and freshman Taylor Sheldon (17th with a PR of 20:16.2).
“We did pretty good,” Peters added. “I know we really wanted to be Lakeridge — hopefully we did that.”
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The Lakers definitely did that, though Lakeridge was a solid third behind the efforts of junior Breckyn Kornachuk and her third-place finish at 18:43.1.
“I feel pretty good. Honestly, for the little hills on the course, I think it went really well,” Kornachuk said. “I was just looking to go under 18:30 because I ran 18:31 at Meriwether. I couldn’t do that at the Nike meet because some girls got piled up and I was about 10 seconds off here, but I think that was pretty acceptable.”
The Pacers also saw freshman Grace Houlihan finish sixth in a PR of 18:58.6 and junior Olivia Smith place 11th at 19:45.3, while junior Megan Larson took 24th in a season record of 20:37.9 and sophomore Sigrid Brakenhielm placed 25th at 21:00.2.
“I think we did really well,” Kornachuk said. “Grace Houlihan (is) absolutely killing it and I think she might have gone under 19 today which was one of her goals so she crushed that.
“We’ve had a couple people dealing on and off with injuries … but I hope that everyone is coming off of that and we’ll be recovered for district and state.”
West Linn was solid, too, running to fourth in the team standings behind freshman Kendall Atwood’s 12th-place finish at 19:47.4, while sophomore Sabrina Noce and freshman Violet Gowdy also added top-19 finishes.
“I felt good. My goal was to break 20 (minutes) and just do well for my team and I broke 20,” Atwood said. “(The key was) my mental state that before, sometimes, wasn’t the best, but I just told myself that I could do it the whole time and it definitely helped.”
Noce finished 18th overall at 20:17.7, followed by Gowdy in 19th at 20:20.2, senior Audrey Jacklyn in 22nd at 20:33.0 and senior Ava Sullivan in 45th at 22:17.8.
“I feel like we had some really good times and I’m really happy for us,” Sanford added. “We really want to qualify for state so we just wanted to do our best, place the best we could and get points for our team.”
See the complete photo gallery from this meet by clicking here.
To see even more images from the girls meet, or to buy prints or digital downloads from this game, go to milesvance.smugmug.com.
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