By GARLAND KENNEDY
Sentinel Sports Editor
With the cross country season now in full stride, Sitka and Mt. Edgecumbe high school runners competed on a winding, hilly course in Wrangell on Saturday. Sitka’s boys took first place overall in the meet, and the Lady Wolves, who didn’t have enough runners to score as a team, individually snagged the first and second place spots.
With some of the fastest runners from Juneau-Douglas and Thunder Mountain high schools absent from the meet, Sitka’s fastest runners found pacing difficult.
“It’s definitely harder to go the pace that you’re hoping to go, but Clare (Mullin, a freshman) and I typically, at least in this last Wrangell race, we ran shoulder to shoulder,” SHS junior Anna Prussian told the Sentinel. “We went into that race because with the times we’d been seeing… there wasn’t going to be anyone else there to push us.”
Sitka Wolves runners Clare Mullin, left, and Anna Prussian, right, approach the finish line well ahead of the other competitors at the cross country meet in Wrangell, Saturday. (Photo provided by Shasta Smith)
Prussian took first place in the women’s race over the weekend with a time of 20:22 in the five kilometer event. With another meet coming up this weekend in Sitka, Prussian hopes to push her time below 19:40.
While cross country is often depicted as a solo sport, Prussian stressed the importance of close coordination with her teammates.
“We knew that if we wanted to run our fastest times we had to work together, because working on your own you’re not going to get very far,” she said.
Though this is Clare Mullin’s first year on the high school squad, she has spent years running alongside Prussian.
“Most of the season I’ve just been kind of sticking with Anna, and that’s been my goal. Because we ran together in elementary school and a year in middle school… Got to stick with Anna,” Mullin said. She claimed second place, moments behind Prussian at 20:25. Mullin said she’d like to break 20 minutes this season.
It was Mullin’s first time running with so many other athletes on the course.
“It was pretty crazy. I didn’t know exactly what to expect going into it and I think just the number of girls that were there coming out to run was pretty amazing,” she said.
In all, 46 girls and 69 boys were in the race.
Coach Shasta Smith said that Mullin’s solid performance didn’t come as a surprise.
“We’ve been watching her since junior high. I watched her run in the Medvejie race during the summer,” Smith said, “and then she came to some of the run clubs this summer. So we knew she had some wheels. For her, she’s still learning how to race – it’s exciting to see such potential.”
Prussian has not experienced a typical cross country season since she was a freshman.
“It’s definitely weird, because freshman year was totally normal, even more normal than this race was, and so I was kind of used to that,” she recalled. “And going into COVID it was kind of weird not seeing anyone in my races, not competing against other teams. So it was kind of a shock going back into it. I felt like I didn’t have my race strategy down, I wasn’t as used to it as I was my freshman year. I’m so excited to be back into it, it’s just much more of an experience to be in the crowds.”
Wrangell’s cross country course is a looping trail through the woods, which exacerbated pacing issues, Prussian said.
“It was a loop three times, so it got a bit repetitive. Going into your first loop is always adrenaline filled and then your second loop is mile two, which for me is always the hardest mile mentally and physically. And then the third loop is, ‘I have less than a mile to finish.’ And so it was definitely hard. Clare and I were always ahead of the rest of the runners, so there wasn’t anyone there to push us, but I liked it,” she said.
On the boys side, sophomore runner Annan Weiland was happy to be back on a trail with a variety of other runners.
“For me it was still pretty new. Last year we only had meets in Sitka and then I was fortunate enough to go to State, but we didn’t get to travel a lot… I just felt really happy for it being the first meet,” Weiland said. He took fourth place in 18:21.
He likened Wrangell’s course to Sitka’s Cross Trail.
“It was kind of like the Cross Trail, a little more wind-y, a little bit of ups and downs. Near the start and the finish it was kind of muddy, a little slippery… All the bendy curves, definitely that’s why I got the time I did,” he said.
Weiland wants to break the 18-minute mark this season.
Coach Smith said she trains her runners to focus on passing the runner in front of them, not running away from the athletes on their tail.
“We talk a lot about offensive running, in terms of looking at who’s ahead, not who’s behind,” Smith said.
She stressed the need for her athletes to put forward their best effort in each race.
“Hard work – I know that there’s kids working hard all over the region. We really, at this point in the season and always emphasize best effort every time,” she said, “and we’ll see how that stacks out. We talk a lot about making sure you’re doing all of the little things that add up to greater success.”
With less than a full girls team ready to run in Wrangell, the coach hoped that senior Tawny Smith would recover from injury and return to running in time to have a girls squad at the regional meet Oct. 3 in Ketchikan.
The Wolves weren’t the only local team in Wrangell; the Mt. Edgecumbe Braves squad ran as well.
Sophomore Jelsey Gologergen echoed runners from across the bridge, saying that running with a variety of teams makes her run more quickly.
“It feels pretty good, because traveling with your team and against other teams just makes you want to run faster and get new PRs,” Gologergen said.
After the 2020 season confined the Braves to a handful of trails around Sitka, she was happy for the chance to run out of town.
“It feels a lot better since we actually get to travel places and we don’t have to run Totem Park and Starrigavan every weekend,” she said. It was Edgecumbe’s second travel meet of the season; the team competed in Skagway Sept. 4. Sitka High didn’t send runners to that event.
With the season already half over, Gologergen hopes her team will work to support each other on the trail.
“Some team goals, I think we can be better at cheering each other on and bringing each other up and telling each other that it’s OK, just take deep breaths,” she said.
In Wrangell, she took 19th place in 25:09 – a personal best – but the sophomore from Nome and Savoonga would like to break 23 minutes this season.
Much like other runners on both local teams, MEHS coach Josh Arnold was excited to return to a more typical cross country season. Last year, he noted, his team spent the season “chasing our own tails.”
“It’s so much fun to be able to get out and compete. We spent the 2020 season chasing ourselves around in circles, chasing our own tails,” Arnold said. “And we chased our own tails faster as the season went on, so that was fun. And I felt we were really blessed because we were in a town with another team, so we were able to run with the Sitka team.”
With more cross country races on the horizon, Arnold is eager for his runners to pit themselves against athletes from other schools.
“It feels great to just get out and be able to compete, be with people again, and chase lots of colors,” he said.
Cross country teams from across Southeast compete this weekend in Sitka at Totem Park on Saturday.
The results for both local teams in the Wrangell meet are below.
Girls 5k
1. Anna Prussian 20:22.16 Sitka
2. Clare Mullen 20:25.63 Sitka
13. Addie Poulson 23:39.06 Sitka
19. Jelsey Gologergen 25:09.97 MEHS
22. Aries Bioff 25:45.37 MEHS
23. Maitlin Young 26:03.77 Sitka
31. Sarah Bahnke 28:35.04 MEHS
32. Sarah Nanouk-Jones 28:52.15 MEHS
40. Ashley Rexford 32:13.15 MEHS
Boys 5k
2. Silas Demmert 17:26.15 Sitka
4. Annan Weiland 18:21.66 Sitka
8. Hank Maxwell 18:46.06 Sitka
9. Trey Demmert 18:47.88 Sitka
10. Asa Dow 18:54.71 Sitka
35. Connor Journey 21:30.95 MEHS
36. Colton Paul 21:32.99 MEHS
40. Jarrett Brown 21:44.73 MEHS
44. Jaden Andrew 22:14.94 MEHS
49. Luke Peterson 23:22.17 MEHS
50. Bryce Jimmie 23:26.51 MEHS
52. Elston Dock 23:44.19 MEHS
