Bragging rights
Gene Blankenship can afford to brag a little.
The West Valley High School cross country assistant coach was celebrating an undefeated, Great Northern League title Wednesday night on the heels of the Eagles sweep of Deer Park and Cheney at Deer Park.
“We’re 56-and-1 right now,” Blankenship said, grinning audibly. “If you count all the invitationals we’ve been to, we’re 56-and-1. I know most people don’t do that, but I thought it would be fun to add up all the teams we’ve beaten this year. Other sports brag about their record all the time.”
The Eagles have a right to brag.
West Valley currently is ranked No. 4 in the state heading into next week’s Class 2A regional meet Friday at Medical Lake. The only team to have beaten the Eagles this season was Lewis and Clark at the season-opening Blackhawk Invitational.
“The kids keep saying they want a rematch,” Blankenship said. “I think they’d win it if they ran again.”
West Valley scored a low 25 points to win the Wenatchee Invitational early in the season. More impressively, the Eagles won their division at the prestigious Jim Danner Invitational in Gresham, Ore., earlier this month, knocking off a list of ranked Class 4A teams from Washington and Oregon in the process.
“I really wanted us to have some experience in a big race like that, and I wanted us to have a tough challenge,” coach Jim McLachlan said. “They were going to place us in Division 2 down there, but I begged them to put us up into Division 1.”
Junior Richard Keroack, a nephew of Beat Generation author Jack Kerouac, finished ninth, turning in a time of 16 minutes, 18.56 seconds over 5K.
In winning the meet, the Eagles beat Kelso, currently the No. 10-ranked Class 3A team in the state, and Snohomish, the No. 8-ranked Class 4A team.
The thing is, this group of Eagles are flying high now as a junior-dominated team. The entire squad will be back again next year.
Keroack is the team’s No. 1 runner, although sophomore Michael White and junior Joey Hartmeier also won events. Sophomore Justin Degenhardt and juniors Alex Hanson, Steve Foster, Dillon Hettinger and Matt Tremblay all contribute.
The Eagles lost last year’s co-No. 1 runner, Josh Gardner, before the season started.
“Josh and his family moved to Utah over the summer,” Keroack said. “I just talked to him the other day. His team (Cedar High in Cedar City, Utah) won the state championship and he finished 15th.”
Keroack is a reluctant No. 1 runner, preferring to divert attention to the team first and foremost.
“That’s what we’re all about,” he said. “We’ve all been running together since the seventh- and eighth-grade. The other guys were running cross country together before I got involved. Josh is the one who got me to come out for cross country.”
The concept of team being paramount was set before they ever reached the high school, although its relationship with McLachlan and Blankenship was honed during a trip to Palo Alto, Calif., during their freshman year.
“We piled these kids into three cars and drove down for the Stanford Invitational,” McLachlan recalled. “We had a chance to get to know them all and talk to them about what they could become as a team. They had a lot of fun looking around San Francisco, but I think it also got them all focused on how good they could be.”
“That was a fun trip,” said Foster, a team captain. “We looked around at all these teams from all over the place and we said to ourselves, ‘If they can do it, we can do it.’ “
The Eagles do a good job of motivating each other, Hartmeier said.
“We all know each other so well,” he said. “We challenge each other, we kid around with each other.
“When they came to me and told me I was supposed to be the No. 1 runner for the meet on our home course, at Plante’s Ferry Park, I said to myself, ‘Okay, this is a challenge. Now I have to live up to it.’ We’ve been doing that with each other all along. We challenge each other, we push each other, we pull each other along.”
One of the team’s prime motivations is to accomplish something no other West Valley boys cross country team has done: win a state title – the one state championship to have eluded McLachlan during his nearly four-decade career.
“We would love to win a state title for the coaches,” Hartmeier said. “But as much as that, we want to win it for ourselves, too.”
“That was our goal from before we got here,” Keroack said. “2006, win a state title.”
For his part, McLachlan said he will stick with his junior class throughout their career.
“I have to finish with this group,” he said. “They’re all back next year. I’ll be back next year, too.”