Cedarcrest High School’s cross country squad traveled to South Whidbey High School Thursday, Oct. 5, for a regular season meet at involving all seven teams from the conference.

“This meet was a good opportunity for Cedarcrest becuase it gave the athletes something to compare to since they ran at this same course a couple weeks ago,” said coach Bruce McDowell. “It also gave the top athletes a chance to compete on the District Championship course.”

The team adopted a different strategy for this course, McDowell said. The course has a difficult second mile due to a fairly substantial hill, so the top runners slowed their pace a little through the first mile. That made their second mile split time a little closer to the first mile.

“It also led to a fast last mile for many of the athletes,” McDowell said.

Both the boys and girls teams won the meet based on team points.

The girls squad was led by Elsie Dombek, who came in first, Alicia Krivanek fourth and Kelly Hall fifth.

The boys squad was led by Grant Van Valkenburg finishing the race in first place, Ben Benson second and Brennan LeBlanc eighth.

Athletes of the meet were: Katelynn Wells who ran 29 seconds faster than her last time at South Whidbey; Ben Norris, 1:21 faster; Hayden Bhavsar, 1:30 faster; Noah Pace, 1:23 faster; and Kyle Stupfel, 28 seconds faster.

Full results are posted at https://www.athletic.net/CrossCountry/Results/Meet.aspx?Meet=132963#/394.

The team also ran in the King’s Roller Coaster Trail Run in Shoreline on Wednesday, Oct. 11.

On Thursday, Oct. 19, Cedarcrest will take part in the Cascade Conference Championships before the Northwest District Championships on Saturday, Oct. 28.