Montague County will have four teams and four individual runners from four schools competing at the regional cross country meets Monday morning.

With teams needing to finish in the top three and runners in the top 20 to advance to the state level, the competition will be fiercer than any meet the teams have experienced so far.

Bowie and Nocona will compete in the 3A Region I, which will be at Texas Tech in Lubbock at Mae Simmons Park. Teams and individuals from Prairie Valley, Bellevue and Saint Jo had the 1A Region III meet moved due to weather to the Jesse Owens Memorial Complex on the University of Texas at Arlington Campus.

3A
For Bowie, the boys team is coming off a second place finish at the district meet. It will be a new experience for this crop of runners and Coach Jonathon Horton, who hopes they will rise to the occasion.

“This will be a learning experience for all our runners, for all of us this is our first trip to a regional meet,” Horton said. “Our guys have playoff and regional experience in other sports, but this will be the largest start our guys have encountered, we are preparing for a fast and crowded start. We are planning to embrace the high level of competition and enjoy our time together.”

The Lady Rabbits will be sending Abby Zamzow, who finished ninth at the district meet despite dealing with a back injury. Coach Chuck Hall says she has recovered well and has looked as good as ever in training, which is good since she will need to run the best she ever has run if she hopes to make it to state.

“She will probably have to run her best time of the year,” Hall said. “Get her time down into the 12:30s to probably have a chance to qualify as an individual. The region is just so stout and so strong.”

Nocona is sending both of its teams to the regional meet. The girls team finished second at the district meet. While they have had a great string of finishes recently, they will have their hands full if they want to sneak into the top three. While this team is young and inexperienced at this level, that could be an advantage for them since they will not know any better. Coach Kyle Spitzer just wants to see his girls run the best they can and hope for the best.

“I expect the girls to leave everything they have on the course,” Spitzer said. “The girls are excited and anxious to get down there and see what they can do.”

The Nocona boy’s team grabbed the last spot by finishing third at the district meet. Their goal from the beginning of the season was to make it to the regional meet. Competing well Monday and everyone running their best times will be the goal for this group.

“We have run each week to better ourselves and through that, we were able to accomplish our team goal of getting to the regional meet,” Coach Colby Shniederjan said. “We are going to use that confidence to run a little bit faster again this week.”

Schniederjan also is holding out hope for his top runner.

“Joan Gomez has an outside chance to qualify as an individual,” Schniederjan said. “He has worked really hard to come back from injury and surgery to make that happen. He has not run close to his fastest time and we are hoping to push that time with a fast field. Our team goal is to lower our average times and chase down the next guy.”

1A
Prairie Valley is the only 1A school in the county that is sending a team as their girls team is coming off winning their second straight district title. Despite this a lot of the runners are new. Weather has been their enemy this season, limiting them to fewer meets than they would have liked this season, along with their practices.

Read the full story in the weekend edition of The Bowie News.