Red Wolf X-C runners go strong at Lake Sammamish meet

On Saturday, Sept. 22, the Cedarcrest High School cross country team competed at the Bellevue Invite at Lake Sammamish State Park, one of their biggest meets of the season. Everything went according to plan, says Coach Bruce McClellan.

The Red Wolves boys finished third in the overall team title, going up against many 4A and 3A schools—Cedarcrest is 2A.

Five of the eight boys—Quinn Radbourne, Dominic Dams, Gage Catherman, Colton Green and Jonathan Gunderson—came away with shirts for finishing in the top 10 of their respective flights.

The coach sees echoes from 2010, when the Red Wolves finished third here and ended up qualifying for state for the first time.

It was also a day for doing some damage to the top 10 lists for Lake Sammamish. The boys did the most— Logan Orndorf improved his number-two time, Cody Wanichek is now number four, Quinn Radbourne is now tied for fifth 5 and Dominic Dams is now seventh. On the girls list, Diana Carr is now number five and Olivia Waterman is now number six, joining a list of only nine girls to break 20 minutes on this course—one being current runner Amelia Anderson from the 2011 season.

"One of the items that I enjoy about coaching is seeing the improvement from year to year of the athletes," McClellan said in an e-mail. "Every situation is different, but almost all athletes will run faster from 2011 to 2012 when compared on the same course."

Wanichek and Dams ran 34 seconds faster than their prior outing, Carr shaved 52 seconds faster, Green was 55 seconds faster, Waterman shaved 1:12.  The biggest drop was by Justin Mendoza who was 5:24 faster this year than last year.

"That means that as the 2012 Justin was finishing, the 2011 Justin still had 3/4 of a mile to run," McClellan says. "Quite a little feat."

He named five athletes of the meet: Cody Wanichek, Justin Mendoza, Diana Carr, Olivia Waterman and Maddy Buckmaster.

 

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