By: Shawn O’Brate
FREMONT COUNTY – The final week of the Cross Country regular season took place this past weekend with schools from all across the county working to get to the final weekend of the season on top of their game and the rest of their competitors.
At the Powell Golf Club on Friday, Lander’s Ameya Eddy finished on top of all the competition as she finished first with a personal best 19:00.12. This comes one week after her last race where she also finished first with a personal best that was 19 seconds longer than her time in Powell. This is her fourth top-two finish so far this season.
Her teammates, Blue Blackburn (20:20.15) finished eighth and Darian Bell (21:18.18) finished in the top-20.
On Lander’s boys’ side it was once again Diego Lobatos (16:59.28), Gage Gose (17:44.41), and Reed McFadden (17:45.76) finished on the top with sophomore Mack White who completed the race with a new personal best (18:00.54).
Those boys of Lander once again looked up at the top of the totem pole and saw Riverton’s Kaden Chatfield, who not only set a new personal record, but he also set a new course record with his time of 16:02.52.
St. Stephens’ girls, Georgetta and Georgeanne Moss, both finished in the top 10 of the JV girls’ race with Georgetta leading all Fremont County runners in the race with her fourth-place time of 22:28.66 and Georgeanne finishing ninth with 24:12.43.
Finally, three of Wind River’s four girls who competed in Powell – both in JV and varsity – finished in the top-30 with Faye Hellyer coming in 28th with her time of 22:30 in the varsity race with Cadance Robison (29:54.93) and Sheraye Spoonhunter (32:04.28) finished top-30 in JV.
On Friday the Casper Glen Legler Invitational took place at Paradise Valley Golf Course in Casper. That’s where Wyoming Indian’s team traveled to in order to prepare for the state tournament that takes place in their own backyard next Saturday (10/22).
The varsity girls finished with two of the top-30 runners at the invite with Roberta Whiteplume finishing ahead of all her teammates with a time of 26:00.64, just ahead of her partner Camellia Brown (26:01.13).
Wyoming Indian’s Colton Sun Rhodes finished on top of the boys with a time of 19:43.15, completing the race just six places ahead of teammate Keiran McCorley (20:01.07) and 10 places ahead of the other Sun Rhodes on the team, Pecos, (20:29.14) who was one of three Chiefs to finish in the top-35.
This week all of the state will be looking toward towns like Lander for their conference championships as 3A West runners flock to the Lander Golf Course on Thursday to compete for the chance at state in Ethete.
Good luck to all the runners who will be competing this weekend and congrats to those that competed this past weekend!