Saturday the 19th of October marked the 2nd League Meet of the Wildcats. This meet only saw 7 teams, but placed the Eastmont athletes to compete against the all the teams in the Big 9 League. The meet was hosted on the Eastmont Junior High campus.

This meet had 4 races, the Men/Women JV races and the Men/Women Varsity races. With over 200 athletes, this meet was relatively small compared to the Invitational meets, but saw some of the best teams the Wildcats usually go up against. Overall, the Harriers took 4th for both Varsity Boys and Varsity Girls, which was the same placement to the last League Meet at West Valley. However, the Eastmont runners were able to close in on the gap between 4th and 3rd place in terms of team scoring immensely. On the JV Boys side, the Wildcats finished 2nd in teams scoring, with 3 runners coming in the top 10s. The JV Girls side saw a Eastmont runner winning the race.

The top Varsity male Eastmont finisher, (once again), Senior Julian Ramos, clocked 16:55, breaking the 17 minute barrier, followed by Senior Ethan Child at 17:16 and Junior Carson Forster at 17:19. In the female Varsity race , Junior Hannah Mikkelsen finished at 20:12 with 6th place and at 17th place came Senior Whitley Hill finishing with 21:18. The Boys JV’s side as mentioned above has Freshman Cohen Davis coming in at 18:49, right behind him was Senior Brandon Black finishing at 18:50, both in 3rd and 4th place respectively. The Girl’s JV side had Sophomore RyAnna Barnes at 23:08, finishing in first place, nearly a minute away from the 2nd place runner.

“RyAnna’s win in the JV girls’ race was a great start to the day, and Cohen’s 3rd place finish in the boys’ JV, with Brandon hot on his tail, continued the vibe,” stated Assistant XC Coach Mark Wavra.

However, not a lot of PRs were established during this meet. The EJHS course had many turns, descending hills and ascending hills, and was known as a generally tough course.

“I feel like our course had a little bit of everything which makes for a great challenge for the runners. There are some hills and tight corners but also some long stretches of relatively flat ground to cover. It made it interesting to run and to spectate! “ explained Assistant XC Coach Tanja Medrano.

But, despite this, the Eastmont runners showed off skills by using strategies against competitions and set goals for themselves instead of timing and placement due to the difficulty presented by the course.

“We saw some amazing racing techniques and strategies being used and I love that we are at the point in the season where those are coming into play. Racing can be much more than just running. Kevin Hernandez Ramos, for example, is a master of hill running and our course provided him many opportunities to surge past competition. Alexi Granados and Joshua Anantamula pulled a move twice where they overtook a competitor on either side and then closed ranks again to mentally shut down an opponent. Braden Vaughan and Mikel Nelms did the same move and it really shows good teamwork while running. Elijarae McGee was able to utilize a surge strategy throughout the race, where a racer throws in a burst of speed to move through groups of runners. He did this quite effectively and it was fun to watch!” explained Assistant XC Coach Tanja Medrano.

Overall, the Harriers did very well against the 6 other teams in the League, despite the many challenges presented by both the course and the runners from the other teams. Many memorable moments were made during this meet because of the technicalities and strategies involved.

“For this race I was not worried about time or placement as the past few races I was just stressing about time and it really bummed me out if I didn’t complete that goal I set for myself. This time I just went in with the mindset of having a fun race and that I did complete. I had a time of 19:29 and finished 12th in the JV race and placed 12th on the team. I’m happy with that as it was a good race for me but you can definitely bet I’m going all out this last race on the 28th. I had two great memories during this race. Josh Anantatmula and I both planned before the race to run together and cut people off by passing them on both sides. So when we did that during the race we were both thrilled and it put a smile on both of our faces. The second memory was when I saw Carter Child cheering me on so I blew him a kiss with my hand during my race and then passed a runner that was ahead of me on the down hill. Overall I say it was well worth it and please Mr. Millard, if you are reading this, I won’t do it again I promise,” said runner Senior Alexi Granados.

“My memorable moment was when I passed a few people at the end of my race, and was able to kick it into my next gear, and I also passed the girl I had been running with the whole race!” said Junior Dylan Schmitten.

Check out the Wildcats’ final meet at Districts, hosted at Walla Walla Point Park, on Thursday the 28th of October.