Penguins Run at Fergus Meet, Headed to Missoula and Frazer This Week

The Whitewater Penguins headed to Lewistown on Friday, September 20th for the Fergus Invite on Pine Meadows Golf Course. The high temperature of the day was 67 degrees with a nice breeze. There were 30 high school teams competing and 18 junior high teams. It was a large meet with many class A and B teams present. We had two high school runners compete, Shelbi LaBrie and Tyler Scheffelmear, and three junior high runners, Barrett Wasson, Hadley Hellie, and Henson Hellie. The Fergus course is probably in the top 2 hardest courses in the state. It is a course full of rolling hills and not many flat areas. Once you get down one hill there is another one to climb, one after another. It really draws in a lot of teams.

The junior high kids were in the day's first race at 10 AM. Barrett Wasson had a goal of an 8-minute pace for the day. Hadley and Henson had a goal of no walking during the course. Barrett was able to run an 8:20 for his first mile and ended up making up some time in the last 800 meters. He had a great finish ending with a time of 11:42 in 55th place out of 106 kids. Hadley came up to the first mile around 9:30 with Henson following, around 9:35. I was happy they were able to find a nice smooth pace, limiting their walking or resting. Hadley ended with a time of 14:37 and Henson followed with a time of 15:18. Both boys doing a good job was slowing it down and running consistently. This was the junior high kid’s first race with a substantial amount of hills and they handled it very well.

We had about a 2-hour break until it was time for Tyler and Shelbi to run. We had to make sure to get them warmed up again before they were up with such a large gap. Tyler ran at noon with a group of 112 runners, double what we are used to running against. Both Tyler and Shelbi decided they were going to run without watches and just listen to their bodies and trust their pace. They did an awesome job of this. Tyler came up to mile-1 at 7:00 minutes which was a little fast but not bad. He’s been looking a lot stronger and using his long legs, lengthening his stride out. Mile-2 he came around at about 8:30 and then made up for it in the last leg of the race. His last 400 meters was an all-out sprint making up great time in this stretch of the race. He ended with a time of 24.07, a solid time for this course. Shelbi followed Tyler in the Girl’s Varsity race that consisted of 98 runners, also a larger number of athletes than we are used to seeing. Shelbi came up to her first mile at 6:44, right where she needed to be. She was sitting in about 30th place at this point, crowded by a large group of girls. By mile 2, at about 13:40, she had moved up in the ranks to about 15th and continued to pick off runners in the last mile. There was one steep, muddy corner in mile 3 that she and Tyler both managed to slip and fall on but got back up and kept running. Shelbi’s last 400 was very strong and she managed to end with a time of 20:55 in 7th place, cutting 16 seconds from last weekend.

This course was definitely a mental and physical win for all of the kids. It’s great for them to see that their workouts are paying off and were headed in the right direction to be successful at state and break their time goals by the end of the season. The junior high kids will have their final meet in Frazer this Thursday, and high school is heading to Missoula for the West Mountain Classic that takes place at the state course on Saturday.