Royal cross country boys, girls run to state

ROYAL CITY — The Royal High School cross country boys and girls teams will be right where they belong this weekend — the state meet in Othello.

This will be the 12th straight year at state for the boys. The girls are making their fifth consecutive state meet appearance.

As usual, all of the state meets will be held at the Sun Willows Golf Course in Pasco. The Royal girls will run in the 1A race at 10:30 a.m. Friday. The 1A boys will take to the course at 9:30 a.m. on Saturday.

The Royal boys made it to state by finishing second at the district meet last week at the Apple Ridge cross country complex. Goldendale won the race with 62 points. Royal scored 81.

The girls took third place in their race even though they ran a tighter race than the boys. Zillah won with 40 points, surprising Wahluke scored 56 and Royal had 66.

Royal had two boys in the top 10. Rodolfo Flores finished sixth with a time of 16:57.5. Kenneth Rooks of College Place won the race in a time of 15:29.3.

The rest of Royal’s first five were: 10. Silver Beltran, 13. Victor Santillan, 19. Alfredo Orozco, 33. Victor Garcia.

The girls ran in two packs, with no space between them. Gracelynn Miller took 12th, and Kay Lester was right behind in 13th. The rest of the top five were: 18. Abigail Delay, 19. Ana Villafana, 21. Elizabeth Guadarrama.