Mountain West mayhem

Tony Banovich for the Valley Press

It’s become one of the biggest high school cross country meets in the Rocky Mountain region. Some may call the Mountain West Classic a distance carnival, others an extravaganza. But, with over 2,000 runners from Montana, Idaho and Washington crowded onto the University Golf Course in Missoula, mayhem may have been the best description. Thundering starts; tight corners; pushing and shoving: pumping up the hill and crashing down; and, wild sprint finishes. Through it all, the harriers of Plains High School were right in the middle of the action on a gorgeous early fall day.

Despite the long grass, the soft ground and the big hill at the halfway point, the deep and fast fields helped to push the Horsemen and Trotters to their best performance of the season. “We had a great day across the board” said head coach Tony Banovich. “In a big meet like this, it would be easy for the kids to get swallowed up by the pack and spit out the back. But, they all ran smart and they ran hard.” The payback for their efforts – season’s best times for almost all of the athletes.

The Horsemen were again led by sophomore Carter Montgomery whose time of 16:52 placed him 77th out of 363 finishers in the boy’s varsity race. “Carter’s run today was a great indicator of how well he stacks up against the other top Class B boys,” said Banovich.

Next in for Plains was junior Jared Sine at 18:38 and Banovich was quite pleased with Sine’s efforts. “This was Jared’s first true race of the season and he ran extremely well. His progress in the last couple of weeks has been fantastic and I think that he has a lot of room yet for improvement before the state meet.”

Following shortly behind Sine was Kenneth Beech at 19:15, also a junior. “Like always, Kenneth went out and did his thing” said Banovich. “He runs hard and he’s always fighting to pick up another place or a couple more seconds.”

On the girl’s side, junior Zoe Banovich and senior Rio Crismore both had season best performances. “Both Zoe and Rio were about 2 minutes quicker than their times from the earlier meets” according to Banovich. “Those are huge drops in time and they are both reaping the benefit of some hard, solid training over the last couple of weeks.” Banovich ran 24:32, while Crismore finished the 3 mile run in 26:57.

Not to be left out were the middle school athletes. For the 1.3 mile course, Dusten Henning ran 10:10 in the boy’s race. For the girls, Carley VonHeeder and Lily Huenink both continue to improve their times, running 11:36 and 13:02 respectively. Also competing in the girl’s competition was Sara Boggess with a time of 15:38.

“I’m just super pleased with the way that all the kids performed Saturday” said Banovich. “We’ve been doing a lot of hard work the last couple of weeks, the weather continues to be hot and we had homecoming activities this week. I’m very proud of the way that the team stepped up and ran so well in spite of everything that they’ve had on their plates.”

Next up will be the Thompson Falls Invitational at the River’s Bend Golf Course on Thursday, October 1st. According to Banovich, “it’s almost like a home meet for us, being just down the road in Thompson Falls. I’m hoping that we get a good turnout of friends and family to root for the kids.” Banovich added that “due to a variety of conflicts, we have yet to have the full boy’s team compete. But, I expect to have everyone toe the line on Thursday and we’re really excited to see how we stack up in the team standings.” With only 3 meets remaining before the state competition on October 24th, expect to see things heat up as the season winds down.