Chiefs not where they want to be, yet

Varsity girls and boys fall short at home meet

MOSES LAKE — Moses Lake had their home cross country meet Tuesday at the Community Park in Moses Lake.

Kamiakin, Richland, Eastmont and Southridge participated in the event, one of the season's two home events hosted by Moses Laked.

The Chief's second event is an invite Saturday.

Both the junior varsity and varsity for the boys and girls teams, from all the schools, participated.

Moses Lake did not defeat any of the schools but head coach Jen Carpenter is looking at the season as a whole when evaluating her team's performance.

"The results were disappointing, but we can turn this adversity into something positive," Carpenter said. "We know that the end of the season matters more than right now, so I'm just glad that the majority of our runners are healthy."

Kamiakin and Richland had the strongest showing of the varsity boys teams with both schools accounting for the top 12 spots for the day.

Moses Lake's Kraig Grant had the top finish for the Chiefs at No. 14 with a time of 19:01. Just 53 seconds behind Grant was his teammate Kaleb Hoffer.

Five more runners competed in the boys varsity race; Eriel Thomas with a 20:18, Matt Rice at 20:19, Skyler Hoffer at 20:42, Jeff Marsh at 20:52 and Taylor Mather with a 21:16.

The top finisher for the Lady Huskies was Myriah Hernandez. She had a time of 24:38, which was good for 19th place.

Next for the Lady Huskies and just three seconds apart, were Vanessa Hernandez and Kristin Budiselich. Hernandez ran a time of 25:44 while Budiselich ran a 25:47.

Kayde Williamson finished with a time of 26:20 and Kayla Chamberlain completed the course with a time of 26:48.

Carpenter wants to push the runners to compete at a high level and is not shy about increasing their training regimen."We just know that we need to turn up the notch on our training for our varsity kids," Carpenter said.

Competing in the upcoming invite Saturday are Othello, Quincy, Warden and Royal High Schools.