Coach Dave Marson took seven of the cross country runners from Sierra Lutheran High School to compete as the Falcon XC club in the prestigious 30th annual West Regional Foot Locker Cross Country Championships race in Walnut, Calif., Saturday.
Runners are divided by class year as well as the elite runners who compete in the seeded races.
The top 10 finalists in the seeded races go on to compete at the national championships in San Diego.
Sierra Lutheran junior Wade Meddles, who has had a stellar performance this year already, ran in the boys' seeded race.
It was a very tight field with the top 10 runners all on the track at the same time coming in for the finish. Meddles' time was an impressive 15:53 on one of the challenging 3.1-mile course, but just less than a second shy of the cut off for the top 10 resulting in an 11th-place finish.
The course consisted of grass, dirt and asphalt and has three impressive hills, including one so steep it uses switchbacks to climb to the top.
One of the hills is named "Poop Out Hill". The course then finishes off with the runners coming into the stadium on a composite track.
First to compete were freshman Nathanael Williams and Jason Deterding along with sophomore Nathan Conover in the Freshman/Sophomore race.
Nathanael Williams ran a remarkable race to place sixth among the freshmen running and coming in 19th overall with a time of 17:57. Conover was 165th with a time of 20:00 and Deterding 168th with a time of 20:04 but the field of runners was 328 strong.
The field draws top runners from California, Alaska, Hawaii, Oregon, Washington, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, New Mexico as well as Nevada.
Preston Lyons ran in the junior race with a time of 18:58 placing 126th out of 255 runners.
Senior Michael Kubel ran a 17:33, placing 33rd in the senior race and Ryan Jackson ran a 22:31, placing 216th out of the field of 237.
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