Lady Wildcats’ tight pack delivers third at Norris
Oak Ridge’s cross-country teams showed progress at the annual Norris Dam Invitational at Songbird Park, with the Lady Wildcats placing third in the gold race and the Wildcat boys finishing 10th.
“Based on how we had run at Victor Ashe (Park in Knoxville the previous Saturday), I felt really good about how we ran at Norris,” Oak Ridge Coach Ed Wright said.
“We’ve got a huge number of freshmen that have come in, so it was kind of a shock to the system. ‘Oh, hey, I’ve got to run 5K instead of 2 miles,’” he added.
“But then they really stepped up the second time around because they knew what to expect.”
On the girls side, Kendra Hurt led Oak Ridge, finishing 14th in 20 minutes, 17.79 seconds.
“Kendra Hurt ...had a really good day, but really all of our girls, our top five all finished within 40 seconds of each other, which is really ideal,” Wright said. “Our first finisher was 14th, but then our No. 5 finisher was 31st. So we’ve got five girls packed into that 14th-to-31st finish.
“I was really pleased with the way they worked together and stayed close to each other, and that really helped. I mean, that was the key to having us finish top three,” he added.
Other top finishers for the Lady Wildcats were Annie Kuhns, 22nd; Brooke Roessner, 23rd; Amaijah Bishop, 25th; and Madelyn Frazier, 31st.
On the boys side, Oak Ridge competed without one of its key runners.
“We’re still missing one of our top boys; he’s dealing with a toe issue right now,” Wright said without identifying the runner.
Tommy Sauer led the Wildcats, placing 49th overall in the gold race with a personal-best time of 17:33.04.
“He really had a big race and kind of had a breakthrough,” Wright said. “He had a personal best.”
Other top Oak Ridge boys were Connor Morgan, 56th; Chase Bolin, 74th; and Jacobi Miller, 85th.
