PUHI — Island School’s girls and Kauai’s boys took home team honors at the Kauai Interscholastic Federation cross country meet Saturday at Kauai Community College. Carolyn Price, the lead runner in the girls’ field of more than 75 runners, set
PUHI — Island School’s girls and Kauai’s boys took home team honors at the Kauai Interscholastic Federation cross country meet Saturday at Kauai Community College.
Carolyn Price, the lead runner in the girls’ field of more than 75 runners, set the pace for the Voyagers, who captured 34 points and finished first, Kapaa High coming across at 39 points. Kauai girls were third with 50 points followed by Waimea High School with 114 points.
Price finished in 20 minutes, 53.70 seconds in the meet which was hand-timed due to technical glitches. Gianna D’Annibale (22:28.70) was third followed by Jade Murphy (23:40.10) coming across eighth overall to give the Voyagers a lock on the lead.
“This was a challenging course, with all the hills,” Price said.
Filling in the No. 2 spot overall, Kauai senior Rachel Medeiros crossed at 22:11.20.
“This is my first season running,” Medeiros said. “As a senior, I just wanted to be in as many sports as I could. I just tried to stay positive and stay strong. I finished second at the last race, and really pushed when I heard the team yelling from the side. I didn’t want to let them down.”
Warriors Kelsea Hennessy (22:35.20) and Victoria Armstrong (23:00.30) finished fourth and fifth. Kauai maintained a point lead over Kapaa when Kristin Chun crossed sixth overall on a 23:07.20.
“I made the mistake of getting out way too fast,” Armstrong said. “Not having some people here running, it kind of threw me off. I should have just run my own race. I heard a lot of people commenting on how hot it was, but I think the hardest part was the hills. This was just an off day for me.”
Juliana Tampus of Kapaa was seventh at 23:12.70.
On the boys’ course, Kauai’s Dutch Fairbanks was dogged by Kapaa’s Braden Andrews for the first two miles before pulling ahead to stop the clocks at 17:54.80. Andrews finished at 18:00.02.
“This was the hardest race so far,” Fairbanks said. “The Kapaa runner forced me off my pace, but I psyched myself in the final mile — I didn’t come this far to lose. Second is the worst place.”
Kapaa’s Manuel Dominguez was third at 18:47.90 before the Raider floodgates opened with three Raiders — Andrew Herr (18:56.50), Gunner Vallatini (19:01.10), and Tytan Heresa (19:03.60) — crossed to lock up the team lead.
Kauai boys posted 25 points followed by Kapaa at 47 points, Waimea with 61 points and Island School rounding out the team standings with 100 points.
The next cross country meet takes place Thursday starting at 4:30 p.m. at the Waimea High School course. This is a make up of the meet rained out last Saturday due to thunder and lightning. Following this meet, Island School will be the site of the next KIF meet on Saturday starting at 8 a.m.
