| Blake Jensen and McKay Allred run for Emery. Allred finishes fifth in the individual competition. |
The Emery High boy’s team and the Emery High girls team each finished second in the region cross country meet held last week at Carbon High School.
The two teams each thought that they had a shot at winning the region crown but the two North Sanpete teams, who each resisted in running in region, finished first in both divisions.
The course at Carbon started on the soccer field, traveled down the hill past the football field and the baseball field, out to Cedar Hills Drive, into the hills south of the houses east of the road and back to the track for the finish after a single lap around the track.
The fastest competitor in the region meet led the Spartan boys. Tyler Killpack finished first in an amazing race. Killpack was 28 seconds off his nearest competitor when he entered the stadium and one minute nineteen seconds ahead of finisher number three. In real terms, he was half a lap ahead of number two and a full lap ahead of number three.
Finishing second for Emery was McKay Allred. Allred ran a personal best of 18:23 to finish fifth overall. Third for Emery was Bryan Larsen. Bryan ran the race in 18:38 and finished ninth. Finishing 13th overall and next for Emery was Levi Swasey in 18:53. Next was Blake Jensen in 18:55 and Dustin Jensen in 19:20. The top six finishers for Emery are all juniors except Dustin, a sophomore.
North Sanpete finished with a score of 35, followed by Emery with 43, Delta with 56, Carbon with 107 and Juan Diego with 155.
Nick Cox, a senior runner that finished seventh for Emery in 19:26 is an Academic All-Region participant.
On the girl’s side, it was unbelievable what the North Sanpete team did. It was staggering to watch the race end. North Sanpete finished first, second, third, fourth and fifth. They also had racers finish 10th and 12th. Unfortunately, number 12 overall does not get to go to state.
Rebekah Bott led Emery across the line with an overall seventh place finish. Finishing ninth was Lacey Montgomery followed by Shalae Cox in eleventh place. Next were Channie Benson in 19th place and Camille Fehlberg in 24th place. The next two finishers for Emery were Ashley Schade and Adrie Weihing.
Coach Darrell Gardner was pleased with the efforts of the teams “Our goal was to win region and to finish in the top 10 at the state meet. The meet is next Wednesday in Sugarhouse Park in Salt Lake City. I think we will do better there than today.”
North Sanpete won the meet followed by Emery, Delta, Carbon and Juan Diego.