LC girls, Mead boys win team titles at Battle for the 509 Invite

For the past two seasons, the Battle for the 509 Invitational girls team championships were won by schools outside the Eastern Washington area code – the 208 to be exact.

For a third year in a row, Idaho had brought over another strong Post Falls team to take down Washington’s beasts of the east, but Lewis and Clark played the big spoiler.

The LC girls scored 46 points Saturday at Fairways Golf Course in Cheney to top Post Falls’ score of 80, bringing back the Battle for the 509 large school title to Washington for the first time since Gonzaga Prep won the inaugural race in 2017.

Three LC Tigers finished in the top 10, led by Audrey Thronson’s sixth-place run of 18 minutes, 18.67 seconds for the 5,000-meter race. Seventh-place Alice Groza (18:36.79) and 10th-place Bridget Burns (19:11.53) followed.

“They are very reliable and did what we expected,” LC head coach Kevin Swain said. “You usually know you are going to get hard work from those three each day and today was that day.”

Of the seven who ran for LC in the varsity race, six came away with personal-best marks, including Thronson, who ran 32 seconds faster from her previous best last spring.

“We did know there were going to be a lot of fast schools here,” Thronson said. “Our coach told us to stick with each other and find the Post Falls girls to hang on to.”

Other than Thronson, Groza and Burns, coach Swain said the rest of his team hasn’t had the experience of racing in a “big-time” invite such as this one.

He said it would be a great test for them as individuals and as a team moving past the midway point of the season.

“We have a couple of youngsters who have not had a lot of experience running as a team in a big race,” Swain said. “Today was a great opportunity to get that ‘big-race’ feel and our freshmen surely stepped up, so we were quite pleased.”

Even with an inexperienced group, Thronson believes this young team’s progression is on a steady climb.

“We do have some new freshmen on our team, and I feel like that has added more depth to our team,” Thronson said. “I think, moving forward, we have built more confidence.”

Second-place Post Falls’ Samantha Wood (17:32.97) and Annatasia Peters (17:41.29) finished second and third, respectively.

Kennewick’s Macy Marquardt won the individual title in a personal-best 17:06.85.

Sandpoint finished third with 114 points and Central Valley was fifth with 131.

West Valley won the small-school title, scoring 66 points to edge East Valley.

After taking a week off from racing, Mead’s boys won the large school team title, defeating second-place LC 69-102.

Brycen Gardner was the Panthers’ top runner, finishing second individually in 15:43.38.

“Brycen’s plan of attack was to be up there with the front pack,” Mead coach Austin Stuchell said. “I think they were letting him do a lot of the work, so it was kind of nice to see him do the work and still come out with a second-place finish.”

Mead defeated LC 27-32 in a Greater Spokane League meet at Ferris three weeks ago.

Three days after that, the Tigers matched up with the Panthers again at the Mountain West Classic in Missoula after a late cancellation at the Brooks Fort Steilacoom Invite forced Mead to find another invitation. LC finished two spots ahead of Mead in Missoula.

“We wanted to compete and we knew we could,” Gardner said. “We knew LC had a strong three-pack and we wanted to break them up. I didn’t want them to beat me, and our other guys knew what their part was. We just wanted to execute our plan and that’s what we did.”

LC’s Evan Bruce finished third in a personal-best 15:43.88. Brian Bowers (fifth, 16:08.32) and Charles Ledwith (ninth, 16:12.49) also ran personal-best times for the Tigers.

Walla Walla’s Brody Hartley won the individual boys title in 15:35.42. Coeur d’Alene placed third with 113 points and host Cheney was fourth with 154.

West Valley defeated Ephrata for the small-school boys title, scoring 101 points.