The regional cross country meets for the area schools are scheduled next week on Oct. 24-25.
Bowie will have to go the farthest as it heads to Mae Simmons Park in Lubbock again. The Jackrabbits are sending their boy’s team that finished second at the district meet back on Oct. 10. It will be the fifth year in a row the team will be competing at the district race and is hoping to improve on last year’s 20th place finish.
The other area teams will all be competing at Lynn Creek Park in Grand Prairie, but on different days.
Both the Nocona boy’s and girl’s teams dominated at their district meet on Oct. 12. The first year in 2A brings with it a lot of unknowns for how high expectations should be since both programs have had several good years of recent history qualifying for the regional meet in 3A and doing well.
The girl’s race is scheduled to start at 12:10 p.m. with the boys to follow at 12:40 p.m. on Oct. 24.
The 1A schools will also start racing at 12:10 p.m. and at 12:40 p.m., but on the next day on Oct. 25.
The Bellevue girls and Saint Jo boy’s teams finished in second place at the district meet while the Prairie Valley girls finished third on Oct. 12 to qualify for the meet. If not as a team, each school have individual runners that could qualify for the state.
The Panthers top runner Collin Thomas has qualified for the state meet the previous three years.
He was dealing with an undisclosed injury at the district meet, but still did well enough to finish sixth overall.
The Lady Eagles Grace Martin finished first in the district race and has bucked the trend of underclassmen girls dominating, getting faster in each of her four years in high school.
Prairie Valley’s Linzie Priddy is hoping to get back to state. After qualifying as a freshman the previous year, she finished third overall at the district meet.
Some runners coming to the regional meet will come with no team and are hoping to qualify individually.
From Gold-Burg Isaac Renteria wants to show last year’s state qualification as a freshman was no fluke.
He’s had a good season so far as he won the district meet and has continued to get faster, but there is no guarantee in a race with more than 100 runners.
Also from Gold-Burg, freshman Ollie Gaston is the latest freshman runner who looks like she has potential to get to the state meet. She finished second at the district meet trailing only Bellevue’s Martin by 14 seconds.
From Prairie Valley senior Tyler Winkler returns to the regional meet for the third time. He qualified as a freshman individually, but even though the team qualified his sophomore year they had to quarantine due to COVID-19 and miss the regional race.
While he ran last year as a junior, it was as part of the team that qualified and he was dealing with injury troubles that prevented him from putting up his best results. He finished eighth at the district meet this year and hopes he can run at least one more race at the state meet.
The only Saint Jo girl Kaycee Clark finished ninth at the district meet and will be running in her first big race and hoping to improve her time.
State qualifiers will be the top four teams and the top 10 runners individually who are also not a part of those top four teams.