Last Saturday, on October 9th, the Wildcats fought hard and competed against 135 teams in the Hole In The Wall XC Invitational at Lakewood High School, Marysville.

After a year of absence due to COVID-19, the Hole In The Wall Invitational was finally back with over 4,000 athletes and 13 races: Men’s Fresh/Soph race, Men/Women’s JV Bronze, Silver, Gold races, Men/Women’s Varsity Silver, Gold races and Men/Women Elite races. The Wildcats competed in almost every race, minus Men’s Fresh/Soph race and the Men/Women Elite races.

This meet saw the Eastmont runners’ incredible performance, with nearly every athlete breaking a PR. The top runner, Senior Julian Ramos, landed a 17:05 followed by Junior Carson Forster with 17:09. Other notable times include (but not limited to): Senior Jack Hensley’s 17:50 and Sophomore Ethan Moore’s 17:58, both achieving sub 18 minute and accompanied by Senior Taran Iwaasa’s 18:28 and Sophomore Emmett Atenco’s 18:30, both making the standard Varsity time of 18:30. The Women’s best times were Junior Hannah Mikkelson’s 19:41 followed by Senior Whitley Hill’s 20:26, and Dylan Schmitten’s 21:24. Along with personal records, the Wildcats also made 6th place in team score in the Gold JV Women’s race and 30th place in the Gold JV Men’s race.

“The Wildcat Harriers had a great meet. About 80% of the team had either a season’s best time or lifetime best mark for the 5km course. We did very well amidst excellent competition from 135 schools from 4 different states,” said Head XC Coach Gary Millard. 

The course had 80% grass, 12% gravel and 8% track with 2 wooden bridges, and although it had rolling hills and several tight turns, it was not the big challenge presented. With 4,000 athletes, the real challenge was the difficulty of racing in a cramped environment without any ways to get ahead of someone.

“The course is amazing because it has a little bit of everything: some open grass spaces, some tight forest trails, some time on the track, a few bridges, lots of surfaces and a couple of little hills. The most challenging aspect was not the course itself but the number of runners on the course–having hundreds of people crammed into tight spaces made passing difficult. This leads to the thing we need to improve on–getting out and getting free. We had a handful of runners get caught in traffic and that’s frustrating to experience and hard to watch. Some people took advantage of sweeping wide on corners and passing loads of people, but some folks just went with the flow, and as a consequence their times were a bit slower than either of us would have liked,” explained Assistant XC Coach Mark Wavra.

However, despite the amazing performance displayed by the Wildcats, there’s always some improvements that could be made.

“The lesson of the day was to not get boxed in. Some of the Eastmont harriers learned this the hard way, as they were not able to get around other runners in their race and it caused them to slow down their pace. Other runners were able to figure out how to make a move around or through big groups in order to move up in the race. Getting boxed in only happens in big races so it is really good to see this racing challenge in action before any championship meets occur,” stated Assistant XC Coach Tanja Medrano.

Check out the Wildcats competing against the other teams in the Big 9 League at our home court, Eastmont Junior High.