State Recap

Two weeks ago, hundreds of high school students all over the state of Oregon travelled to Lane Community College to run their hearts out in pursuit of the state title. Back-to-back for two years, Silverton high school (my hometown high school) was able to qualify and make the exciting trip down. Traveling down was one girl (individual qualifier) and the boys varsity team (2nd at districts).

Oregon decided to give no mercy to the state runners and didn't provide them with the unusual sunny weather that had been seen through the fall season, but instead gave them the famous Oregon rain. The course is generally accepted as a slow course; the start is the length of a football field, and quickly funnels into a hill, which crests over "the bowl" and leads to the back forest which marks mile one. The runners are then guided alongside the highway along a trail where they pass by the start and loop around "the marsh", exiting at the same point of the entrance to complete mile two. The second mile is met by the same hill from the start, and then a drop into the bowl instead of running along the crest. Then climbing out of the bowl, the runners cut the course short (instead of going back to the forest) and make their way to the marsh where they run towards the track and sprint the final 300 meter on the blue Lane community college track.

The Girls 5A race was quite fast with the leader putting on a sizable lead and finishing in 17:46 (37 seconds ahead of 2nd), with the Silverton runner earning her berth to BorderClash in 5th place.

Boys team With an 8th place finish!

Beautiful running weather 

The Boys team had no individual runner place 30, with the first Silvertonian crossing in 39th place at 17:12. However, the boys were able to secure 8th place in state, giving good hope for returning next year.

Also at the State race was Ella Donaghu of Grant high school who broke a 22-year old State course record in 17:26. Just last year, the boys state record (previously held by Olympic Silver Medalist Galan Rupp) was broken uncontested by Matthew Maton in a blistering 14:45.

Maddie in the far orange on the podium!

As aforementioned, BorderClash is an elite race that takes the top 12 runners from 5A (top 40 from Oregon) and pits them against the top 40 runners from Washington. They compete as a state team in hopes of seeing which team is better. It turns out that Washington having the larger pool of people to select from usually handily crushes Oregon on the team score.

Photos courtesy of Amber Stutzman and Silverton CrossCountry

Congratulations everyone! Now on to track!