Cloverdale sweeps three-way meet with North Putnam, Owen Valley

Wednesday, September 12, 2012
North Putnam's Dalton Spear placed second on the night with a time of 17:27, while Cloverdale's Bailee Stevens posted a time of 21:02, good enough for second place.

CLOVERDALE -- Cloverdale's boys' and girls' cross country teams hosted North Putnam and Owen Valley for a three-way race Tuesday night.

Ideal conditions made for good times as the host Clovers beat the Patriots and Cougars by a team score of 34-47-58 on the boys' side and 28-36 on the girls' side, with the Cougars short of a full squad.

Owen Valley's Ethan Sparks won the boys' race in 17:17, :10 better than North Putnam's Dalton Spear. Chris Worthington and Nick Blundell led the charge for Cloverdale by finishing third and fourth.

Cheyenne Wright also picked up a first place finish for the Patriots but Bailee Stevens, Claudia Monnet and Amillia Nally finished second, third and fourth, powering the hosts to a victory in the girls' race. North Putnam's Katie Douglas finished fifth to lead the Cougars.

Cloverdale head coach Kyle Walter said that both squads came back well from racing at the weekend.

"Both squads ran fast times at the John Mitchell Invite and, with all the conference schools except Greencastle there, the ladies finished fifth and beat the rest of the conference schools," Walter said.

"They're running well. We're getting in shape, using these meets as good, hard practice and experience and hopefully it will lead to success in a month as we near the end of the season."

Walter added that both squads showed some resolve by their performances on Tuesday.

"Bailee's been running well. Claudia has been a bit under the weather but the two of them, along with Amillia, are very talented runners and on any given night, any one of them could lead the other two," Walter said.

"We got beat by Owen Valley on the boy's side Thursday at Clay City, so for the boys to compete and beat Owen Valley on our home course was good for their confidence going forward."

North Putnam head coach Kevin Lutes said that the boy's squad raced particularly well.

"I think everyone who ran tonight on the guys' side PR'd tonight. We're happy with that, even though we'd like to be further along. They're improving, which is awesome, as they still have several weeks left," Lutes said.

"This was the first time this year that Dalton has broken 18:00 minutes with a 17:27 tonight. He ran a really good race after racing at the John Mitchell Invite Saturday, which wasn't the easiest thing to do."

Lutes added that the girls ran well and saw improvement even from the weekend.

"The girls did alright. Katie is coming along and ran quite a bit better tonight than she did Saturday. She's still not ideally where we'd like her to be but she's a whole lot better than she was at the start of the season," Lutes said.

With both squads having some days to finally practice, both coaches said that the chance to get workouts in would be very helpful at this point in the season.

"We've only got a couple of races over the next two weeks, which will give us some time to train, unlike the race, easy day, race, easy day that we've had of late," Lutes said.

"We'll get some hard workouts in before we start tapering off with the major races still ahead."

"We've got a meet Thursday against Tri-West and then we get some time to train, which we've been waiting for before the Greencastle Invite on September 22nd," Walter added.

"We'll look forward to that before we really start to gear up for the county, conference and sectional meets."

At Cloverdale

Boys' Results

Cloverdale 34, Owen Valley 47, North Putnam 58

1. Sparks (OV) 17:17; 2. Spear (NP) 17:27; 3. Worthington (C) 18:44; 4. Blundell (C) 19:08; 5. Trent Mason (NP) 19:15; 6. Staley (OV) 19:46; 7. Trevor Mason (NP) 20:03; 8. Maners (C) 20:06; 9. Martin (C) 20:09; 10. LaFary (C) 20:37, 12. Salyers (NP) 21:16; 14. Straziscar (NP) 21:41; 15. Monnet (C) 21:53; 17. Volland (NP) 24:08; 18. Brown (NP) 25:06; 20. Ballard (NP) 27:36

Girls' Results

Cloverdale 28, Owen Valley 36, North Putnam INC

1. Wright (OV) 20:44; 2. Stevens (C) 21:02; 3. Monnet (C) 22:26; 4. Nally (C) 22:58; 5. Douglas (NP) 24:09; 6. Coffin (OV) 24:25; 7. Jones (OV) 25:22; 8. Worthington (C) 25:28; 9. Jemison (OV) 25:45; 10. Carey (OV) 26:13, 11. Nees (C) 26:47; 13. Land (NP) 28:38; 14. Dean (NP) 30:08; 16. Cross (C) 31:52