After a weekend off of racing, the Pagosa Springs High School Pirate cross-country teams will be back in action Saturday morning when they host the McGinn Memorial Cross Country Challenge atop Reservoir Hill.
“We took this past weekend off to allow for some recovery time for the team and are hoping the sickness has finished making its rounds through the team,” coach Rachael Christiansen wrote in an email to The SUN.
The home meet, according to Christiansen, will also serve as the season’s Intermountain League (IML) meet to determine all-conference honors.
The top five finishers from the IML will be named to the all-conference first team, while the sixth through 10th IML finishers will be named to the all-conference second team.
“For this weekend, we are looking for Sienna Rose and Jesse Beck to finish in the Top 10 of our league runners and earn All Conference First or Second Team in our league,” she wrote. “We believe they are both strong runners and know our course very well and will be competing for those honors.”
The Lady Pirates will race at 10 a.m.
“As a team, on the girls’ side we would like to see Kaiya Lyons as close to Sienna as possible, as she has been improving all season and she excels when running hills,” Christiansen wrote.
The coach adds the team will be without Adison Johnson, who will be out of town, and Mila Miller, who is currently dealing with a hip injury.
“Missing these 2 girls will be tough for the girls team, but Madi Stretton, Bella Jackson, and Hailey Sams should be healthy and ready to put in some work in Adi and Mila’s absence,” the coach wrote. “This will also be Vivy and Gwen’s first home course race and we are looking forward to seeing how they will do at home! We are currently ranked 4th coming into this race, but with it being our home meet, we would like to try and place 3rd, seeing how close we can get to Centauri and Alamosa.”
The Pirate boys will follow and race at 10:45 a.m.
“On the boys’ side we want to see how close our group of Eli Nehring, Merrick Tudor, and Dylan Dempster can get to Connor Thomas,” Christiansen wrote of the goal for the team. “In Dolores, these 3 boys ran very well together, but we think they each have more in them and can push up in the race. It would be great to see them right behind Connor and would improve our standings in the race by quite a bit. Peyton Jackson is also not far behind that trio of boys so we would love to see him join them as well.”
Christiansen notes it will also be the first home meet for freshmen Jacen Easling and Weston Sweet, and she’d like to see Isaac Hanto running with them.
“Stetson Osborn and Asher Kurz should be back from illness and injury and we’d like to see these 2 sophomores have a strong day,” the coach adds. “As a team, the boys are ranked 8th out of 10 teams so our goal is to outperform those rankings and move up in front of Bayfield and Cortez.”
randi@pagosasun.com
