The Times - Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley

HERMISTON -- Athletes on both Waitsburg-Prescott and Dayton cross country teams raced hard at their first meets of the season on Satur­day and Tuesday. WP runners exceeded coach Joanna Lanning's expectations Saturday at the Brooks Runner's Soul XC Fest in Hermiston, the ath­letes' first meet of the season. This was a huge meet, with more than 200 runners representing over 15 schools, Lanning said. Athletes were from all classes of schools including an Oregon 6A school all the way down to Waitsburg-Prescott, the lone 1B/2B school in the field.

The day started out great with Trent Hafen (8th grade) taking third in the 1.5 middle school race with a time of 9:35 out of a field of 47 run­ners, Lanning reported. The three W-P freshman athletes: Erik Sandoval, E.J. Meserve and Ben Moser, ran in the JV 5K race posting good times. This was Sando­val's

first cross country race, and he placed 36th out of 119 entrants with a time of 20:47, an impressive showing, Lan­ning said. Meserve was 72nd with 22 minutes, and Ben was 97th with 23:27. "They all did very well and know what they have to do to keep improving," Lan­ning said. Senior Isabel Benito ran a very tough race, finishing 12th with a time of 22:06 out of 55 varsity girl athletes.

"The day was sunny and quite hot by the time the varsity races were held, with temperatures in the 80s," Lanning said. "We were all very proud of her efforts, and she gave the race all she had." So did her fellow W-P athlete, sophmore Seth Deal, running the best race of his cross country career. Seth was 7th overall in the boy's varsity 5K with a time of 17:08. "He left nothing out on the course and ran an extremely smart race," Lanning said. "This is the first runner I've had in my seven years of coaching to post a time in the 17s. To do this so early in the season is fantastic."

Lanning admitted the ter­rain was a flat, fast course, but temperatures were hot and some of the footing was sand, which made the race more difficult,Lanning said. Deal's fellow teammates, seniors Nick Carpenter and Matthew Montgomery, raced well too, Lanning said, with Carpenter placing 38th with 18:41 and Montgomery in 55th place with 19:38. "Great efforts by all made it one of the best days ever," Lanning said. Dayton runners got off to a slow start Saturday at the Asotin Island Run, where athletes had "no necessar­ily spectacular results," said coach Dan Nechodom. "Of course, I would never want to make excuses, but we were running against several big schools there," he said. Dayton competed against athletes from Clarkston and Pullman to name a few schools present.

Things changed Tuesday afternoon in a meet at St. John. Senior Jaron Button, who is training to enter the Marines after graduation, took first place against run­ners

from St. John Endicott, Pomeroy and Liberty Chris­tian. "Jaron really ran a hard race," Nechodom said. "He took the lead at about ¾ of a mile into the race and never let it go. He just re­ally cooked it. It was fun for him because in the past he'd had races where things were hard, things were hurting. It was fun to see the fruits of his hard work this summer." Nathaniel Steen also did well by placing in fourth out of 18 runners, while Seth Jackson came in at ninth and Nick Owens at 10th. "We didn't have enough guys to score as a team be­cause you have to have five," Nechodom said. "But I'm pretty confident if we'd had fiveguys, they would have had a shot at taking it." Dayton girls didn't score as high, but they met their own personal goals. "For one, this was her first race, so it was kind of an unknown," Nechodom said.