Valley Teams Here At Home Next Week

Cross Country runners in both Waitsburg-Prescott and Dayton continue to keep pace with personal goals and edge their way up the rankings. Waitsburg sophomore Seth Deal beat his personal best and finished a three-mile race in 16:22.88, taking first place at the Richland Invi­tational cross country meet Saturday. He was up against 94 other runners in that race.

WP runners recently ex­perienced a hot day on a slow course, as coach Joanna Lanning put it, at the Pasco Invitational last weekend. Head track coach Ron Huntington took the team to this meet while Lanning attended her daughter's wed­ding. "Coach Huntington said times on this course gener­ally run a minute slower than the average 5K course," Lan­ning said.

Last weekend's meet was an invite with 13 schools of all sizes participating. WP's boys team finished 7th. Seth Deal again led the way with a 6th place finish and a time of 17:34.

The top five finishers were all upperclassmen from larger schools. The rest of the team placed as follows: Nick Carpenter 19th, 18:52; Matthew Montgomery 49th, 20:26; Erik Sandoval 52nd, 20:32; E.J. Meserve 67th, 21:54; Ben Moser 70th, 24:05. There were 72 boys in the varsity race. "The W-P middle school boys had an awesome day!" Lanning said.

Trent Hafen won the 2-mile race with a time of 12:09, and Trey Potts was 8th with a time of 14:37. Some high school boys ran the same race, and Trent placed 2nd overall, finishing just 39 seconds behind the winner, who is in the 11th grade. Next Tuesday Dayton and WP will both host meets on home turf.