Cross country team opens season today at Camp Casey meet
Last Saturday was the sixth consecutive year the Oak Harbor cross country teams have opened the season at the Lynden Co-Ed Relays. The Relays feature one of the few times that high school sports are truly co-ed as the race is conducted in teams of five runners, traditionally three boys and two girls per team.
This year several team records were set as two of the eight Oak Harbor team across the line took fourth place out of the 60-plus teams. The group of Chris Wichers, Leonila Celestino, Richard Carter, Amanda Gordon, and Derek Wirth ran 55:36.0, as they took 70 seconds off the team record set last year. During the race both Wichers and Celestino set individual team records. Wichers had a split of 9:36.8 for 3000 meters and broke the team record set by Scott Sebens in 1999 by 3.8 seconds.
“Chris had a great race,” head coach Seth Hodges said. “He and a runner from Squalicum High School ran neck-and-neck the entire race.” Wichers went on to finish ahead of the Squalicum runner.
Junior Leonila Celestino ran 12:09.5 and cut almost 40 seconds off her freshman time to beat the old Oak Harbor girls‚ best by 12 seconds.
“Leonila has looked very impressive in early season workouts this year but I never would have guessed she’d break the team record by such a large margin,” Hodges said. “It was a very pleasant surprise.”
Oak Harbor’s other award winning team was that of Kelly Garcia, Challon Waldron, Chad Tacia, Jessica Brundidge, and David Marriott. They finished 11th with Oak Harbor’s 3rd best all-time mark of 57:37.9. During the race Jessica Brundidge set a new Oak Harbor sophomore girl best of 12:25.3, this despite missing the previous day‚s practice with stomach flu and temperature.
It was a very promising start to this season and a bit of success on which to build. The Wildcats are in action today as they host a 5-team meet at Camp Casey. Today’s race features Snohomish whose girls are the eighth ranked in the nation. On the boys side Snohomish is the 6th-ranked 4A team in Washington and Meadowdale is ranked number two for 3A schools.
