ShawneeDispatch.com

Pete Logan

Staff Writer

The long trek to Minnesota proved worthwhile again for Cougar runners.

As has become customary in late September, Shawnee Mission Northwest cross country coach Van Rose took both his boys and girls varsity teams to the Roy Griak Invitational in St. Paul, Minn., last weekend.

As has also become customary, the Cougars returned home Sunday with impressive performances against the country's best programs on their resume.

The Cougar boys placed third out of 46 high school teams from throughout the Midwest and Northern states, while the Cougar girls placed 26th out of 41 teams.

The boys' team used a good finishing grouping while placing six runners in the top 100 of a 433-runner field. The girls had two runners in the top "We felt pretty good about it," Rose said. "It was a huge meet. With a meet of that size the race really has taken on a different dynamic. The course had a great surface but was very challenging. It's always changing."

The key to the Cougar boys' impressive performance seemed to be their tight grouping. Staying together in a huge crowd of runners allowed the top six Cougars to all finish within .26 of a second of each other.

Daniel Munro was Northwest's top finisher at 32nd with a time of 17.07. Jared Ellsworth, 41st, 17.12; Keaton Jones, 46th, 17.15; Diego Ladron, 51st, 17.19), Sterling Spencer, 71st, 17.32; and Aaron Thornburg, 74th, 17.33, all followed, leaving almost 300 runners in their wake.

While pleased with his team's finish, Rose said he hopes his runners will remember the lessons they learned from the race.

"With that number of runners, early on your position is probably not as good as you want," Rose said. "That's forcing you to pass a lot of people. Because the competition is so good you don't know if it's appropriate to be up front or not. As a result, we may not have come out as fast as we could have. The guys did a good job of catching up."

For the girls' team, it was the Cougars' first experience with a 5,000-meter course after running all of their previous races on 4,000-meter courses. Sophomore runners Lisa Imgrund and Christine Nelson continued their string of impressive performances by finishing 50th and 56th, respectively, with times of 20:28 and 20:35.

The Cougar girls had an opportunity to race among a field unlike any they will see again this season and against some of the country's best runners.

"No other race they have this year will compare to this," Rose said of his girls' squad experience. "The girl that won the race ran it in 17:58, and she's probably in the top five of national finalists."

Rose now looks to the last couple of varsity races of the regular season to shore up some areas of both squads as they prepare for the postseason. That means filling out the varsity roster for the Cougars' final charge.

"The varsity girls have to come up with seven runners," Rose said. "The guys have six close together. Now we've got to try and find a seventh and get him up there closer."

Northwest runners next will compete Saturday at Haskell.