Tahlequah looking strong early on, once again: Tahlequah's boys cross country team dominated the field at the Collinsville meet last Thursday, with junior Zech Van Fleet winning the 5000-meter event and three other teammates in the top eight.
"Our season has started off pretty well," Tahlequah coach Jason Proctor said. "We won last week and we hosted a meet a couple of weeks before that and were fortunate to win there as well."
Van Fleet, who was the state's 5A runner-up last season, won the race in 16:44, an impressive 28 seconds better than second-place Jaime Ashford of Skiatook, and looks poised to challenge for the state title once again.
"Zech is our leader," Proctor said. "He's a pretty good runner and started the year off pretty well, winning his first two races and is looking forward to testing himself against some of the best runners in the state over the next couple of weeks."
But Tahlequah, which finished third at state the last two years, is far from a one-man team. Mohamed Bassime finished third, Braxton Hood fifth and Aaron Eversole eighth.
"We've got four to six guys that on any given day can run pretty close to each other," Proctor said. "We're pretty young and it's kind of a new year for us, a new era for our program."
Owasso girls use superior depth to win at Collinsville: Owasso dominated the girls meet at Collinsville.
Sophomore Haley Geissler won the two-mile race, while as a team, Owasso had all seven varsity runners finish among the top 16, with two more uncounted finishers in the top 22.
"We really have, on a seven-girl team, we have about nine girls," coach Blake Collins said. "We've had two varsity spots switched out already, so we have had nine girls run varsity up to this point and then we have a couple of girls behind them that aren't too far off. They work hard every day and push each other and it pays off in the meet."
Geissler, who earned All-State honors as a freshman last year after coming in 10th at the state meet, looks like she's continuing to improve. "Hailey's just picking up where she left off last year," Collins said. "She's placed second, third and first now in our first three meets. ... She's a leader on the team and I love having her there."
Bartlesville looking like a power on the rise: To wind up second among 28 teams is a pretty impressive accomplishment, especially when the only team that edged you out for first is the defending state champion.
For Bartlesville's girls team, the performance at Saturday's Bishop Kelley Invitational two-mile race was even more noteworthy because their top finisher, sophomore Ashley Barnes, ended up in sixth, so it was clearly a team effort.
Grove's Michaela Werner won it individually in 12:04, while last year's 6A champs, Jenks, prevailed in the team competition.
In addition to Barnes, who finished fifth at the state meet last year as a freshman but has been battling back from an injury, Bartlesville freshmen Shay Stayton, who finished seventh, and Erin Epperson, who was 15th, demonstrated that they have arrived.
"We've got some great freshman," Bartlesville coach David Ayres said. "Our oldest person on varsity is a junior and the rest of them are freshmen and sophomores, but this is probably the best girls team we've had in a really long time."
Bartlesville has several more elite-level eighth-graders on the way, as evidenced by its victory in the middle school one-mile race, so it figures to be a state power for years to come. "Our junior high girls, last year they pretty much won every race they entered and this year they've pretty much done the same," Ayres said. "We're really excited about some of the eighth-graders coming up."
Player of the week: To nominate a cross country of the week, please email Barry Lewis at
barry.lewis@tulsaworld.com.
HS Other
With just a few weeks left in the regular season, Edison (19-10) is peaking at just the right time.
Muskogee had been unbeaten in District 6A-3 games heading into last Thursday's battle against Bixby, but that came to an end after Bixby emerged from a 10-inning thriller with a 7-5 victory.
