Alex Wright leads all-local Spokane Colleges XC team to NWAC men’s title

Maybe it’s no great surprise that Alex Wright can turn on the afterburners.

After all, there is a bachelor’s degree in aerospace engineering attached to his name.

The surprise, then, is finding him blazing trails for the Spokane Colleges cross country team four years after graduating from Central Valley High School – and leading the Sasquatch to the men’s title Monday at the Northwest Athletic Conference championships in the fall’s second and final race at the Course Spokane Valley.

Wright pulled away from Lane’s Andrew Rush over the last 400 meters to become Spokane’s third consecutive individual winner in 25 minutes, 23.3 seconds on a course softened by last week’s steady rains. That led a 1-4-6-7-8 Spokane finish, the Sasquatch romping to a 44-point victory over Lane and putting all 10 entries in the top 20.

On the women’s side, a 1-2 finish by Taylor Dickey and Lydia Montes de Oca allowed Southwestern Oregon to dethrone the Sasquatch by a 45-53 count – even though just 11.5 seconds separated Spokane’s five scoring runners.

Speaking of slim degrees of separation, all 10 of Spokane coach Sean McLachlan’s male entries were pulled from high schools within 30 minutes of campus – eight Greater Spokane League grads and two from Coeur d’Alene Charter Academy.

“That’s what I prefer,” said McLachlan, a West Valley alum. “I’m a little biased, because they kind of forget about us over here.”

Forgetting about Wright might have been excusable, however, since he hasn’t worn a school’s uniform since 2021.

As it did for all runners, COVID-19 turned Wright’s junior and senior years at CV into hash – state meets canceled, cross country and track smushed into a single spring season. So despite strong times on the track – 4:14 in the 1,600, 9:19 for 3,200 – Wright’s competitive career came to a screeching halt.

“I had already committed to Purdue regardless of whether I could run there,” he said. “I talked to them about walking on, but by the time of my senior year in track when I was running some fast times, they said, sorry, we don’t have room on the team.”

Never mind that Wright’s best time this spring – 24:32 – would have scored for the Boilermakers at this year’s Big Ten meet.

“I’m happy with how it turned out anyway,” he said. “Running would have been an added bonus at Purdue, but I was busy enough as it was. And it’s been a lot of fun here.”

A happy accident, of sorts. Or a conspiracy.

Wright’s brother Colin just finished up two years at Spokane, winning back-to-back NWAC 800-meter titles. Another younger brother, Aaron, enrolled this fall (he finished ninth Monday). Somewhere between the Wright household and McLachlan’s office an idea was hatched to float the prospect to Alex, who had continued running on his own at Purdue but was returning home “to look for a job,” he said.

“He never ran a step in college,” said McLachlan, “so technically he has three years of eligibility left if he wants to go on to an NAIA school.”

He’s certainly found his racing legs again.

Wright had the NWAC’s best time this fall, but on Monday watched Rush and Treasure Valley’s Brayden Lamanna surge out to a 30-meter lead in the first two kilometers. Wright and teammate Holland Hurd of Cheney – brother of Spokane’s 2023 champ Luke – made up all but a couple of strides of that by the halfway point of the 8,000-meter race.

“I tried to make a couple of moves at 4K and 6K, but Brayden and Andrew stuck with me,” Wright said. “So then I thought I’d wait until the last 400 and outkick them. But I was getting worried when there was a kilometer to go and Andrew was still breathing down my neck.”

The cluster of teammates not far behind was no particular surprise, though the finishing order might have been. Hurd had been Spokane’s No. 7 runner the last two meets. No. 3 man Issac Rigsby, who placed sixth, was running just his fourth race after a femoral stress fracture wiped out his senior year of track at University High School.

“It really helps to have that many tough guys to train with,” Wright said.

The same might be said of the Sasquatch women, who bunched seven runners between Melissa Walker’s eighth-place finish and 19th. But having graduated all but one runner from last year’s title team, they didn’t have the low-stick capability like Dickey, a two-time Nevada champion on the track last spring. She won by 16 seconds over teammate Montes de Oca in 22:47.6 over 6,000 meters, a new distance for the NWAC. Both are freshmen who figure to be back to do it again next year.

And Wright?

“We’ll see,” he said. “I might have to go get a job.”