STATE CROSS COUNTRY: Running close to home

At this point in the season, there’s no real surprises.

Especially for the local teams that qualified for the state cross country races on Saturday at Farragut State Park in Athol.

Most have seen it, twice, to be exact.

When the Farragut Invitational was held on Sept. 12, District 3 champion Mountain View, Meridian, Timberline High of Boise, Capital and Borah all made the trip.

Since then, each of the northern schools raced again on the course on Oct. 22 during district/regional meets.

“State is a weird entity, and anything can happen,” Coeur d’Alene coach Cathy Compton said. “I’ve seen some really, really remarkably shocking things, and others not so much. We’ll see and time will tell, but we’ll seee who comes out to play that day. I think we’ve got a little bit of a homefield advantage knowing the course because nobody’s really ran on it — Mountain View was here — and a couple of other teams (on Sept. 12). Having this as your home course really helps, and I think it will help us a lot. I don’t really know where anyone fits in. It’s really anyone’s game.”

5A: Coeur d’Alene High has won the last three state 5A championships, but graduated four runners off last year’s champs.

“We’ve got a younger team this year,” Compton said. “We graduated off some unbelievable athletes, but we’re a young and growing team. I still think we’ve got a shot at things at state. We’re only graduating one person off this year’s team (Carmen Duffy), and we’ve got a strong JV team. All of them want that spot on the varsity team, and the momentum is there.”

Junior Caitlin Conway, who finished sixth at last year’s state meet, and was eighth as a freshman in 2013, won last week’s 5A Region 1 race.

“I’m not quite sure where we fit in, but we’re going to hopefully push for a trophy,” Conway said. “It is what it is, but we’ll push through and give it our best. They’re just a younger group of girls. When we run, the girls look up to me just like I looked at Josie (Brown), the Storys (Kara and Krista) and Kaitlyn (Gunnerson).”

Brown is running at Washington State, Kara and Krista Story at Idaho and Gunnerson at Brigham Young.

Mountain View of Meridian swept team titles during the Farragut Invitational on Sept. 12, on the same course as Saturday’s race.

Coeur d’Alene’s boys also won a regional title last week to advance.

“Some of them ran a little flat,” Compton said last week at regionals. “We’re a young boys team and only losing one off that team as well. I’m confident they they’ll do better (this) week. I think some of them learned some lessons by running a little flat. They’ll get up be ready to go.”

4A: Cooper Haney and Isabelle Kirk qualified individually for Lakeland.

Sandpoint’s girls are aiming for a third straight state 4A title.

3A: Timberlake High will have the shortest bus ride of any team coming to state this week, with the meet being 10 miles away from its Spirit Lake campus, something coach Shawn Lawler hopes will pay off for his squad on Saturday.

“I think there’s something to it,” Lawler said. “We’ll talk a little about being able to sleep in our own beds, and that’s an advantage that we have when it’s this close. We’re fortunate that we’re able to come and train on this course, because it’s also within the Timberlake district boundary. We’ve raced it twice, so the kids know it really well and there’s not going to be any surprises come race day.”

Junior Brayden Menti, who won the District 1 title last week, is confident of his team’s abilities this week.

“We’ve got experience on the course,” Menti said. “We know how to run it — where to push the pace and where to conserve our energy. On paper, we’re third (in the IdahoXC.com rankings), but think we can easily get second or first. Anything can happen on race day. I think if we can get a couple of people to step up, anything can happen. If we’ve got some guys that start pushing themselves a little more, we can do some good things.”

“We were a little flat (at districts) to be quite honest,” Lawler said. “We’ve certainly had better days, but it’s not all that bad. It’s hard if you run really well one week to do it again the next week. And that’s OK. We’ll be ready. The kids have goals to bring home some hardware, and that’s what they’re focusing on now.”

2A: Coeur d’Alene Charter swept team titles at the District 1-2 meet.

1A: This is the first year that 1A has been its own classification. In past years the 1A athletes competed with the 2As in cross country.