The course was wet with rain, twisting and badly planned by a rookie coach, but all of that barely mattered to two South Whidbey cross country teams used to pulling out wins in unusual ways.
On Saturday, it was time for the Falcon girls to shine, this time at the Hoquiam Invitational. With their lineup depleted due to an injury to one of the team’s best runners, the girls still managed to — barely — take a team championship over their closest rival, 2A Chelan.
In the closest finish at any meet they’ve run so far this season, the Falcon girls clipped Chelan in a tiebreaker, winning the meet with 47 points and on the strength of a number-six runner who knew which uniforms to watch on the course.
At the same time, the boys, who seem to scramble their lineup every week, placed third in the meet, two places behind champion Chelan.
But bringing in the decisive finish for the girls was junior Becky Gabelein. A varsity runner since turning out as a freshman, Gabelein finished seven places in front of Chelan’s sixth runner, Josie Simonett, to give her team the victory. Cross country meets are scored on the finish places of the top five runners on seven-member teams. In the case of a tie, the finishing place of a team’s sixth runner comes into play.
Gabelein, who clocked a 22-minute, 40-second run on the 3.1-mile course, said she knew where she needed to be.
“Before the race even began, we were on the lookout for Chelan,” she said.
Out front, the first five South Whidbey girls across the line did fast work. Leading the team was sophomore Mary Bakeman, who cut 35 seconds off her time at the previous year’s meet to take third in 19:47. Two seconds back was senior Callie Supsinskas, who also improved, notching her time down 27 seconds.
Coming in third for South Whidbey was freshman Katy Gordon, taking the place of an injured Nancy Godsey. Behind her, moving up from the junior varsity team, Melissa Mydynski made big strides with a 28th-place finish for the team. Sophomore Britta Madison rounded out the scoring with a 22:30, 32nd place finish.
On the boys side, the performances were solid even if the footing was not. Running on a course redesigned this year after staying the same for the past 25 seasons, the Falcons ran into some trouble on wet ground and slippery pavement. At the two-mile mark and poised to contend for the race lead, Falcon senior James Sundquist fell then slid several yards on his back on muddy ground. After being essentially long jumped by the fourth- and fifth-place runners in the race, Sundquist got to his feet, took back the lost ground and finished third in the 122-runner race. Despite the fall, his finish time of 16:29 was 14 seconds better than his result in 2002.
Behind Sundquist, sophomore JD Peters was 12th with a 30-second improvement over the previous season’s Hoquiam Invitational. Junior Holton Schmitt was third for the Falcons in 17th place, followed by freshman Jason Fitz in 37th and Chris dePender in 48th.
Earning the biggest improvement on the day was the team’s number-six runner, Phil Schorr. The senior clocked an 18:23, a 67-second improvement over his best run. Making the run a bigger achievement was the fact that Schorr was running with a cold. Looking back, he said he thinks he could have run faster had he been healthy.
“I felt really bad at that race,” he said.
Senior Jeff Strong was the seventh Falcon finisher in the race, taking 71st.
Falcon coach Doug Fulton said the race showed his teams at their toughest. All the same, he said he would not have minded staying behind Chelan a little longer this season if for no other reason than to keep his runners from being marked at the conference, district and state championship meets coming up later this season.
As of this week, the Falcon boys were the second-ranked 2A cross country team in the state. The girls are ranked fourth.
