Penguins Kick off Season at Wolf Point Invitational

The Penguins kicked off their season heading to Wolf Point on Friday. We've had ten solid practices so I was pretty confident the girls would have a successful first meet. I think this is the hardest I've run kids in the first couple of weeks, but I've got two returning veterans that I knew could handle the miles and they hung in there.

Ava Hanley was my only runner on Saturday morning as Shelbi LaBrie was not feeling well. It was an absolutely beautiful day for a run, about 65 degrees and no wind. The course is mostly flat with a couple of dips here and there. The runners have to go down toward the river bank and then make their way back up to the golf course. Two of the three miles of the run are all on the golf course and mile two is down by the river. It's a great first meet of the season for runners trying to get back in the swing of things.

Ava is my senior and I think she's ready to have a big season. She's very capable of getting down into the 25's and I'm hopeful this is the year she'll do that. She set out in the race with a plan of having a 9-minute mile pace. Her first mile was about 30 seconds too fast which is to be expected. In her second mile, she fell off by about 30 seconds, and then she was able to finish the race very strong with a great kick at the end. I looked back at last year and she had a time of about 32 minutes so she ran this year's race five minutes faster with a time of 27.24 putting her in 16th place out of 45 runners. This was such a great way to start her year off!

This week we have the opportunity to head over to Kalispell to prepare for the state meet that will be run at Rebecca Farms. They have the Flathead Invitational on Friday. The girls will run at 3:30 in the afternoon so stay tuned for results! It will be a big meet for them. Good luck to all of the other Phillips County runners this upcoming week!