Manson Boys cross country follows up their League Championship with a District Championship

The Manson Cross Country team traveled to Moses Lake on Wednesday to compete in the District 5/6 State Qualifier Meet.  Fifteen teams from north central Washington and south eastern Washington were present to compete for the District Championship.

The meet started with the girls’ varsity race.  Manson has four HS girls who compete in Cara Hutton, Emely Valencia, Raven Pope and Grace Cullison.  To earn a spot to state as an individual the girls would have to place in the top 21. Freshman Cara Hutton did just that as she finished 20th with a PR of 23:03 on the 5k course.  Freshman Emely Valencia just missed a spot by finishing 23rd but also set a PR of 23.26.  All four Manson runners set personal bests in the race.

Next was the boys’ varsity race.

 In the previous race the Manson boys had won the league championship by knocking of Liberty Bell.   Liberty Bell had won 8 straight league titles prior to Manson winning this past Saturday.

The Manson varsity consists of seven runners lead by Junior Conner Torgesen.  Conner won the individual league title in the previous race and backed it up in Moses Lake finishing 3rd overall and setting a 5k personal best time of 16:48. After Conner was sophomore Grant Torgesen who finished 11th overall and also set a PR.  In fact six of the seven varsity runners PR’d on the day including Bryce LaMar, Blake Cochran , Jose Vasquez, and Conner Clausen.

In all their efforts were enough to hold off Tonasket and Liberty Bell for the team District Championship.  The boys team will take 8 runners to state; Conner Torgesen, Grant Torgesen, Bryce LaMar, Blake Cochran, Juan Portillo, Jose Vasquez, Conner Clausen and Titus Petersen.

State is run in Pasco on Nov. 3.