Saxon keeps leadership run going

Third-year Ferris state high school cross country runner Robert Cosby wanted to emulate his predecessors.

“When I was a sophomore, I watched the captains lead the team,” Cosby said. “Last year I watched the captains do it.”

Now it was Cosby’s turn as senior team captain.

“It was something I really felt I wanted to finish,” he said.

The Saxons’ captains have taken this togetherness thing to extremes in taking turns leading their teams to three successive State 4A championships.

In 2003 one of the captains, Justin Houck, was the school’s first finisher, in fifth place, during the race. Last year another captain, Ben Poffenroth, also finished fifth as Ferris’s No. 1 runner.

Last Saturday it was Cosby first to the finish for Ferris. You guessed it: He, too, was fifth overall.

A Greater Spokane League team has won the 4A state title every year since 1988. Mead won nine in a row. University won three straight. Mead won three more.

The current Ferris streak has pushed the GSL title run to 18 in succession.

“This was a tough one because of how it’s gone all through the season,” said Ferris coach Mike Hadway.

When the Saxons and Panthers first met at the Highlander Invitational, things were looking good for Ferris.

But the team bombed at the Stanford Invitational – “I don’t want to think about that one,” Hadway said – finishing behind Mead there, and in the meet for the league title and again at regional.

Even though the Saxons had beaten Flathead, Mont., during the SunFair Invitational and lost to Tahoma by only a point without varsity regular Cam Quackenbush, the Saxons’ stock dropped with the Nike Team Nationals regional ranking committee.

So Hadway decided to low-key the week before state.

“It was not going to be, ‘You’ve got to beat this guy, you’ve got to beat that one’ and have them go ‘Oooh.’ It was just relax and race,” said Hadway.

He did tell his runners that they had to win to return to the Nike Nationals: “I just told them, ‘Win, or you’re going to Footlocker.’ I didn’t want to pressure them.”

No pressure? There certainly didn’t seem to be any at Sun Willows Golf Course in Pasco on Saturday. The Saxons positioned themselves for the title challenge by the two-mile mark of the 3.1-mile race. Cosby was second, and the others were packed together in the upper 20 percent of the 157-runner race.

Behind Cosby, the other team scorers were juniors Steven Olsen, David Hickerson, Quackenbush and Pat Maloney, who all finished between 14th and 30th places. Sophomore Paul Hawkins and senior Joe Roberts round out the team.

Mead also returns five runners from its second-place finish.

“It’s going to be another battle,” Hadway said of Ferris’ bid for four in a row.

Lewis and Clark tied for 14th out of 16 schools, Ryan Zentz the highest finisher at 54th. Five of seven Tigers return.

Among girls, Ferris’s Becky Mackelprang was 14th, third best among GSL runners. She missed a medal by two places and three seconds. Lewis and Clark’s Eleanor Siler was 34th.

In girls 3A, Cheney’s Anna Kimball finished 58th, and Kyle Miller was 69th.

David Jacob from Medical Lake placed 15th in boys 2A, and Liberty’s Andrea Collins medaled in ninth place among 1A/B girls.