Riverside girls’ young team claims state title

Bill Kemp has been in the cross country coaching business for a long time. In his 26th year of coaching at Riverside — with no previous distance running experience before he was hired — his teams are still going strong.

Riverside boys and girls teams during his tenure have won 22 top four team trophies, with 12 top-two finishes.

This year’s girls kept a low profile but last Saturday secured the Rams fourth state championship (two each) with nary a senior on varsity.

“Now we can say whatever we want,” said Kemp, who the week before at districts hinted his team might have a title shot.

His reason was that a team relying on ninth-grade talent is an enigma.

“I know from experience that freshmen coming up can make a difference for a team,” Kemp said. “But with young girls you don’t know what’s going to happen.”

What happened was that the youngsters, including three frosh and a sophomore, competed unfazed.

In an early eye-opening big school invitational at South Whidbey, several ran then-season bests. Although later losing by 10 points to defending champion East Valley-Yakima at SunFair in Yakima, Kemp had an inkling that a title challenge was in the offing.

“This was a wide-open one,” said Kemp of state. “I knew it was going to be close, and I didn’t want to advertise much.”

Stephanie Dye finished sixth, freshman Amanda Wilson, whose sub-par race at SunFair caused Kemp’s optimism, was 14th and the other scorers were better than their counterparts in the 110-138-147 win over Port Townsend and EV.

The year before was rare in that Kemp didn’t have a team qualifier at state. Dye and Mariah Hansen, were there as individuals, with Dye placing ninth.

Hansen had been a freshman member of Riverside’s second-place team finisher in 2003 and said that going to state as a team is much more satisfying.

“It was so different; I really felt alone,” she said of last year’s experience. “It’s way better with a team because you have support. And it’s more fun.”

As junior veterans, Kemp put them in charge of nurturing the newcomers during a summer of training and socializing.

Wilson, the fourth in her family to run at Riverside, said the older girls helped a lot, although she trained on her own because she’d heard summer cross country camp was hard.

“We got together and had fun,” she said. “They made us a team.”

Fellow freshmen Sammi Nelson (34th overall in the race), Charissa Suhr (who had a collapsed lung as a youngster and was running with a missing toenail but placed 61st) and sophomore Melissa Sweeney (53rd) completed team scoring. Junior Caroline Craft completed the lineup.

“These girls have been consistent the entire year,” said Kemp. “They’ve been wonderful.”