The field for this Saturday’s sectional cross country meet in Nixa will be full of Tigers.
Carthage will send its entire boys squad and three members of the girls team to the Class 4, Sectional 3 meet with a chance to qualify for the state championship races next week.
To get there, runners had to finish in the top 30 at last weekend’s district race in Kansas City. The top four teams also qualified as a whole.
Senior Clayton Whitehead turned in another race to remember for the Carthage boys. He captured the district championship by turning in a time of 15:54.73 and finished 27 seconds ahead of the second-place runner.
His performance, and five other Carthage runners finishing in the top 30, helped the Tigers earn third place in the team standings.
Head coach Andy Youngworth said Whitehead is having one of the all-time great seasons in Carthage history.
“You’ve got to go back to probably 2010 to have somebody who’s had the individual success that Clayton has had,” Youngworth said Monday. “Evan Adams had a really good senior year. I think Clayton’s been a little more consistent, he’s just a different kind of runner. They’ve run on all the same courses and Clayton has surpassed him on every one.”
Whitehead ran with a pack of six or seven runners for most of the first mile before separating. The strategy worked perfectly.
Lee’s Summit West, which won the district, had three runners in the top nine, and second-place finisher Ray-Pec had three in the top eight. Webb City’s Owen Weller finished 10th to help the Cardinals to a fourth-place finish.
Junior Noah Talamantez placed 12th for Carthage with a time of 17:14.64. His brother Christian, a senior, placed 19th in 17:31.87. Junior Selvin Estrada Perez was 26th in 17:47.24, sophomore Malcom Robertson was 28th in 17:47.67, freshman Mariquis Strickland was 30th in 17:49.49 and junior Anderson Ixcol was 43rd in 18:17.24.
“Last year we had two kids qualify for the sectional,” Youngworth said. “One of those was Clayton who went on and medaled at state. The other was Marlon Lara. To have four of our top seven be brand new kids to cross country and our fifth one, Malcom Robertson, he ran mostly JV last year. We’ve seen slow, steady improvement over the course of the year. Those guys get more confident in their abilities and have learned how to race 5,000 meters. Noah Talamantez ran a great race and finished 12th. His brother Christian ran a good race as well. He was step for step with Noah until the last 800 and fell back a little bit.”
Carthage will be joined in Saturday’s sectional by the District 5 qualifiers, which are West Plains, Kickapoo, Branson and Nixa.
The Carthage girls will send Jenari Lopez, Jezuri Lopez and Jenna Fosdick to the sectional race. Jenari, a junior, placed 12th in the district with a time of 20:21.81. Jezuri, a junior, was 27th in 21:17.52 and Fosdick, a senior, was 29th in 21:19.03.
The girls narrowly missed qualifying as a team, finishing in fifth place behind Webb City. Lee’s Summit West, Ray-Pec and Carl Junction took the top three spots. Lee’s Summit West placed seven runners in the top 11 and Ray-Pec took second, third and fourth respectively. Carl Junction’s Alanza Montez placed eighth.
“The top four teams that qualified took 24 of the top 30 individual spots,” Youngworth said. “The rest of the field was fighting for just six spots. We were fortunate to have three of those.”
Senior Brianna Marquez, a two-time state qualifier, just missed qualifying by finishing 32nd in 21:31.26. Sophomore Lauren Wilson was 38th in 22:10.69, Carla Marquez was 47th in 23:07.21 and senior Morgan Brown placed 58th in 24:13.84.
“Brianna ran a great race, her time was really good but she just couldn’t quite hold on,” Youngworth said. “She was in 30th place with a couple hundred meters left and didn’t quite have enough left in the tank to hold off a couple girls. I’m really proud of her. Just like Jenna, a four-year runner. She was a state qualifier as a freshman and sophomore and a sectional qualifier last year. To have a senior like her be as consistent as she has been for four years says a lot about her.
“Lauren Wilson, a sophomore, ran a great race,” he said. “It was pretty close to her best time of the year on a pretty tough course. I’m happy for Jenna. She’s a four-year senior who has worked hard every day for four years. Never misses a practice. Always there for offseason. I’m happy for her to have a chance to run for another week. Morgan Brown ran her last race and again I’m really proud of her. She had a pretty major injury that took her out of her junior year and she really had to start all over with training. It took a lot of self discipline to do a lot of that on her own. I know that if she could have stayed healthy another two years she would have been right up there with Jenari. She was that good as a freshman and sophomore. She was really a big part of our team this year especially in the leadership category.”
Saturday’s sectional girls race will start at 11 a.m. with the boys race to follow at 11:40 a.m.
