Cross country teams win in Thompson Falls

The Columbia Falls girls cross country team won the Thompson Falls Invitational last week. Ashley Andrews took second with a time of 20.39.

Ally Sempf was fourth, Mya Badger sixth, Cora Hannan eighth and Marissa Schaeffer ninth as the squad easily outpaced rival Whitefish.

The boys also won, edging rival Browning.

Logan Peterson led the pack with a fifth place finish and a time of 17.29.

Oliver Kress was seventh. River Blazejewski was 10th, Quinn Clark 11th and Lucas Peterson was 12th to lead the scoring for the Wildcats.

At the Mountain West Classic, Blazejewski had his best race of the season, taking 83rd with a 17:13.1

On the girls’ side, Andrews took 67th with a 20:51.

At Thompson Falls, coach Jim Peacock said it was nice to see the boys do well against Browning, who was down one of their top runners.

“Browning is an extremely good team, and it is encouraging to know that we can compete with the best in Class A right now.  Our top five boys all ran the race under 18 minutes, and we’re a tough team when they do this,” he said. “Overall, from our fastest varsity runners to our least experienced JV runners, I was really pleased with how hard the team competed in Thompson Falls.  It was a smaller meet, but the kids were relaxed, fast, and competitive.”

The Mountain West is a huge event, but Columbia Falls rose to the occasion.

“Our teams did a great job navigating the mobs of runners, and we had some great performances.  Our boys varsity finished 17th overall, and was the second Class A team behind Browning this time,” Peacock noted. With Homecoming the night before, they still ran pretty well.

“Of Class A schools, the girls were fourth.  I felt they gave everything they had for the race.  Legs with a few less dance moves and a couple more hours of sleep might have produced slightly faster results, but they couldn’t have run any harder, and their effort is what’s important on any given day.”

This week the Cats travel to Hamilton on Thursday.  There, the girls will get another shot at Corvallis and Hamilton, both of whom finished ahead of them at Mountain West.  The boys will be tested by some very talented individual runners, and the Corvallis boys team young, but sneaky good and getting better every week, Peacock noted.