Valley runners post top-5 finishes at Palmer Invite

PALMER — West Valley and Juneau Douglas split the team titles at the Palmer Invitational on Saturday. Juneau won the girld’ team standings and West Valley won the boys’ title on a windy afternoon at Palmer High School.

Kendall Kramer of West Valley won the girl’s 5-kilometer by 11 seconds over Sadie Tuckwood of Juneau. The two got out to a sizable lead early in the race, and were closely trailed by Allison VanPelt of Wasilla. VanPelt’s third-place time of 18:41 was more than a minute faster than the fourth-place finisher, and the fastest time of any Valley girl on Saturday.

“It’s my favorite course. It’s a lot flatter and then there’s hills and there’s nice downhills. So it has like a perfect mix of everything and some courses have too many hills so it’s kind of hard to PR on them,” VanPelt said.

Tuckwood led much of the race over Kramer, who was right on her heels throughout the first and second laps, and made her move near the end of the race. Palmer sophomore Sophie Wright came in ninth place with a time of 20:41.Palmer, Colony, and Wasilla finished third, fourth, and fifth in the team standings, respectively. West Valley placed four of their runners in the top 10, and actually tied in points with Juneau-Douglas at 38. Palmer senior Lydia Ortiz made quite the move throughout the race, finishing 12th with a time of 21:01. Sophia Nowers also made it into the top-20 for Palmer, finishing 19th with a time of 21:24. Lydia Bushey finished 13th with a time of 21:06 for Colony, right in front of teammate Sofija Spaic, who finished 15th at 21:12.

The top two spots in the boys Division 1 5K also went to West Valley and Juneau. Crimson Bears senior Arne Ellefson-Carnes led the race wire to wire to take home the victory in the boys race by more than 10 seconds over Ari Endestad of West Valley. While Ellefson-Carnes’ time of 16:28 was good enough to win the boys Division 1 race, it was not the fastest time of the day. Sophomore Tristian Merchant of Anchorage Christian ran a 16:07 to win the Division II race. Senior Gabe Martin of Grace Christian turned in an impressive time of 16:38, which was the third fastest time turned in on Saturday. Grace Christian also won the Division II team title with a ridiculously low score of 30, placing all of their runners inside the top 20.

Wasilla’s boys finished fourth in the team standings, Colony fifth, and Palmer sixth. Colony’s Lane Meier led all Valley runners with a fourth place finish for Colony. Meier just missed breaking into the 16-minute times, running 17:00.6.

“Lane Meier had an amazing day. We had a good performance from Norse Iverson, he had a breakthrough day. Overall just about what we expected, some hot performances,” Colony head coach Norm Rousey said. “You should have some of your hot performances coming up usually this would be a race that everyone wants to kind of show themselves.”

Wasilla junior Hunter Hayes was right behind Meier in fifth place at 17:08, and freshman Landon Hayes placed 15th at 17:30. Palmer placed two inside the top 20. Amiqaq Maclean finished 11th and Connor Owens finished 14th, both running sub 17:30 times.

“When you’re coming down the finish stretch and you’re trying to give everything it’s basically like running in a hurricane,” Palmer senior Connor Owens said. “The third lap is hard.”

The Palmer Invite has often been the largest sporting event in the state, but not in 2018. Eight schools from Anchorage denied requests to attend and instead participated in class races in Anchorage. Even without the attendance of schools from the state’s largest city, 22 teams from all corners of the state showed up to run the trail around Palmer High School that ends on the track at Machetanz Field. While this is the point in the season where many runners break through and achieve faster times, injuries have plagued both the Wasilla and Colony teams.

“That’s enough time to get a little bit of fitness in, so this is the first race a lot of those kids can really show that. Besides that, it is pretty fast, just because of the lack of hills we have and there’s a lot of flat straight sections on this course compared to a lot of other ones that typically don’t have that,” Palmer head coach Chris Osiensky said. “It’s definitely a little slower,” Osiensky said in comparison to the course in past iterations.

The Palmer XC course has seen a number of renovations over the years as Machetanz Field added turf, and remains one of the fastest courses in the state. Both Osiensky and Palmer running legend Mike Janacek dislike the last turn into the stadium, and hope to make that wider and less aggressive in coming years.

Palmer was missing freshman phenom Katey Houser to a foot injury. Osiensky said she may not race until regions, hoping not to aggravate the injury prior to ski season where Houser also plans to race.

The Mat-Su Running Club donated their finish arch for the end of the race on Saturday.

“We’re greatly appreciative of the running club,” Janacek said.

In his first year at the helm of the Palmer program, Osiensky had some help in organizing one of the premier running events in the state. Osiensky thanked previous head coach John Bishop and his wife Brandy for heading up the administrative duties of the meet so that he could focus on coaching. Osiensky also mentioned parent volunteers, some who do not even have children on the team anymore, as a big help in putting on the Palmer Invite.

“None of this would be possible without that,” Osiensky said.

Janacek admitted that he hates running in the wind, but still enjoyed addressing the fans throughout the eight races on Saturday.

“Boy don’t count Tuckwood out, she’s a quality runner. She’s a Sophomore and so she’s got a lot of juice yet to bring to the game. The team title race is super exciting there. I think we had the two top girls in the state right here in Division 1,” Janacek said. “Kramer was just a lean away from getting under 18 and so I think if she’d have known a quarter mile ago she was that close to getting in the 17’s, she’d have put the hammer down a little earlier but she was probably playing smart and doing what coach said: just win the race today.”