Cross Country: LHS competes at Silverwood
Opting for a fun competition at Silverwood Amusement Park north of Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, the Libby High School cross country team avoided the sizeable Flathead Invitational in Kalispell on Saturday.
As it turned out, the Silverwood Invite featured schools from four states and hundreds of competitors.
“It was a fun thing for the kids for all of the hard work that they do,” said LHS coach Rod Tempel, who said the athletes enjoyed the amusement park afterward. “There were probably 22 teams there with 150 boys in the boys varsity and at least 150 in the girls varsity.”
For the third straight meet, William Lott and Nikola Falk were the top runners for the Loggers. Lott completed the 3.1-mile course in 19:04. Falk finished 34th among the girls in 20:53.
“We ran some pretty hard hills last week and one of her legs was bothering her a little,” Tempel said about Falk. “It bothered her again yesterday (Saturday). We have to make sure we can take care of that.”
Lott had broken the 19-minute mark at Libby the previous week but that came on a 3.0-mile course, one-tenth of a mile less than the route at Silverwood.
Jacob Thomas finished runner-up as far as LHS competitors go with a time of 19:09. Thomas improved 30 seconds over his Libby Invite time on a course that was longer.
“Jacob Thomas ran as hard as I’ve ever seen him run in the past two years,” Tempel said.
Other varsity boys included Ben Graziano (20:14), Zeke Carlson (21:12), Cody Elliott (21:30), Matt Nelson (21:33) and Chris Faulkner (23:13).
Besides Falk for the girls, Elizabeth Rodgers came in with a time of 30:20.
On an interesting side note, Libby’s Jacob McCrohan performed well in what was called the Citizens Race. McCrohan, sophomore, joined the cross country team late and didn’t have enough practices in to qualify for an official interscholastic meet.
“He goes out there all by himself and runs a 20:21, which is only seven seconds slower than Ben Graziano,” Tempel said. “That puts him basically in fourth (on the team). Jacob earned a varsity spot next week at Farragut.”
The Loggers will head to the Farragut (Idaho) Invitational on Saturday.