Thinclads do well at massive Mountain West Classic in Missoula

Hungry Horse News

The Columbia Falls girls cross country team took 13th at the Mountain West Classic in Missoula. They were the second-ranked class A school at the massive meet, which draws teams from across the state and Idaho.

Hardin bested the Wildkats by two places, taking 11th. Bozeman won the meet overall.

Siri Erickson was the top runner for the girls, with a time of 20:13, good enough for 27th place.

Hannah Sempf was 31st with a 20:26.

Courtney Hoerner took 80th with a 21:34.

There were 328 runners that finished the race.

Samantha Wood of Post Falls, Idaho won the race with a 18:13.

On the boys’ side, the Wildcats were 32nd. Logan Peterson was tied for 70th with a 17:34.

Luke Athay of Idaho Falls won the race with a 15:42.87.

“The main significance of this race was to preview the Missoula course,” coach Jim Peacock said. “This is the same course the team will run for the State Championships on October 23rd. We got a good look at it, and the kids now have a better idea of how to approach it. The secondary goal of the day was to get a benchmark of where we fit in with other Class A schools. Most of our Class A competition was at this meet. Because of the humongous size of each race, it’s a little hard for runners to directly compete against other teams because you can’t really track down your individual competition, however, you do get a decent look at how teams relate to each other.”

Peacock was happy with the performances.

“Overall, it was a fun day, and I’m pleased that the team is continuing to improve every week. This is an interesting meet that can be overwhelming the first time you experience it, and because this event was cancelled last year, and because our team is young, few of our runners had experienced this event. As a coach, it is hard to help them understand and visualize the scale of the race sizes, and it was fun to watch how they reacted and responded to the races.”