South boys win state cross-country title

Saturday’s OSAA cross-country championship meet at Lane Community College brought a warm, clear day, fast races, and a South Eugene boys’ team trophy for the first time since 2017. The meet featured a new national-best boys’ time and South Eugene girls taking the second-place trophy for the second straight year.

Four Lane County teams earned top-four finishes, including the Siuslaw boys’ 3A team win, while its top runners will move on to national regional meets as the championship season continues.

Shibata fights off sickness, gets second 6A title for South

Yosuke Shibata is used to dominating, but he couldn’t shake McMinville’s Isaiah Carpenter for much of Saturday’s race. The two were paired down the back stretch of the 6A boys course, then went together into the woods.

Maybe it was because the South Eugene senior spent half the week in bed recovering from the flu, and the next half trying to figure out if he could run. Saturday’s 6A final became an exercise in control.

Shibata didn’t want to overdo it and risk worsening the fever ahead of the bulk of the championship season, so he stayed patient and matched moves. He rarely fell out of the lead, and never out of the tandem. When he and Carpenter made it onto the track, Shibata was a few lengths ahead and didn’t need to drop the hammer.

“I’m just super grateful that even through sickness, I was able to push through it and still get the state championship,” Shibata said, winning in 14:53.3. “One of my goals, along with the state meet record, was to leave a legacy for Eugene, and just show my upbringing, and I think getting a title definitely still gives me some history in there.”

The senior’s new training partner, junior Khalil Sabzalian, pulled in for a ninth-place finish in 15:23 to help secure the team trophy as 16th-place Jacob Loveless led the Axe’s other five finishers.

“(Sabzalian has) been doing really great this season,” Shibata said. “It’s been nice to have people to work with in workouts again. It kind of reminds me of my freshman year, and he’s a hard worker, so it’s always great to get some extra reps in with him and hit threshold with him since he’s a more long-distance focused guy, so I think we like to meet threshold quite a bit, so it’s definitely fun.”

Shibata has committed to Duke University and already signed an NIL deal with Brooks.

South girls, led by Johnson Hess’ silver, secure second-place trophy

Sophomore standout Evangeline Johnson Hess’s star continued to rise as she earned second place in the 6A girls race in 17:36.6 behind University of Oregon commit Ellery Lincoln of Lincoln High School, who broke the course record in 16:57.6.

Johnson Hess, of South Eugene, finished third at the cross-country state meet a year ago and has been key for the Axe.

“I think that this season we’ve put in a lot of work,” Johnson Hess said. “We’ve seen a lot of extraordinary outcomes, but today, everything just came together for all of us.”

Junior Julianne Bawden made the podium in seventh place — a huge jump from last year’s 63rd-place finish — and South Eugene finished second in the team standings.

“I would really just say that coach Jeff (Hess) has really believed in me,” Bawden said. “(Before) he first started coaching for South Eugene, when we were talking about who would be our next coach, I remember talking to one of our upperclassmen and just saying I wanted a coach who believed in the program and in us individually.”

Johnson Hess stayed off the back of Lincoln, who has dominated Oregon distance running over the past cycle, but kept a healthy gap off the chase pack and never let go of second place. Bawden, meanwhile, jumped from 10th to sixth over the first four kilometers before finishing seventh.

The Axe added five other finishers, including 13th-place Claire Reeder and 26th-place Eleanora Diment (both sophomores), to round out their 71-point outing. 

Of South’s seven qualifiers, five were sophomores and just one (38th-place Cora Ludwig) is a senior. There’s a belief, Bawden said, that any runner can earn a spot on the varsity team. That paid off Saturday and should keep paying off over the next two seasons.

“I think we’re a really young team,” Johnson Hess said. “I think, as a team, there’s more training, more experience, there’s more races to be done, and I’m really excited to get to all do that together.”

North’s Ashenafi McKinnis runs strong third in record-breaking race

Summit’s Bjorn Blankenship will get the headlines after shattering the boys all-classes course record in a 14-minute battle with Crater’s Garrett Faught. The finish also gave Blankenship the nation’s fastest time in a boys high school 5k this season. 

North Eugene’s Ashenafi McKinnis had no one to battle with — just himself, hanging off the back of the record-breaking pace, and finishing alone in third; a satisfying conclusion.

“That first kilometer — I thought I was done after that,” McKinnis said.

He wasn’t.

McKinnis placed second last week at the 5A district meet, behind Faught, before sticking near the leaders for most of the race Saturday. It became a mental game, he said, more than a physical challenge. 

He tried to keep the leaders in his sight, but they disappeared around the bend as he hit the track for the final 300 meters.

“I was scared the whole time because I was like, ‘I know there’s a whole bunch of guys behind me,’” McKinnis said. “I try not to look back a lot, but I was like, ‘If I can get on the track without them 30 meters away, like, I think I should be good.’ I got on the track in pain, but I gutted it out.”

North Eugene added six more finishers to finish ninth in the team event. Springfield’s Adrian Estes was 13th in 15:42.6 as the Millers finished just behind North in 10th. For the girls event, Springfield’s Isabella Wells was the only local runner, finishing 28th in 19:57.8.

Marist’s Sage goes back-to-back as 4A individual champion

A year ago, Corbin Sage battled his opponent the whole way in the 4A state final before taking his first state championship. Saturday, he was just racing the clock.

Sage had the 4A state record on his mind as he separated from the pack with less than two kilometers to go. He emerged from the woods alone, got his flowers as he took the home straight and bested Alexander Garcia-Silver’s 2022 record by more than three seconds, finishing at 15:18.9.

“Honestly, last year, (the record) didn’t quite come together because the race was a little more tactical,” Sage said. “But this year I knew I was going to take it from the gun.”

The Marist Catholic senior led from the start, as he wanted, dropping briefly to second at 3K before reclaiming the top spot by the 4K mark.

“Once I’m in the race, I think it’s harder, because when I was obviously preparing to go from the gun, and with Cooper (Altenburg) and Kaden (May) right behind me, I ran a little tense, I feel like, because I just wanted them to be off my back so I could just kind of run it by myself,” he said.

Cottage Grove led local schools in the boys’ team standings with a fourth-place finish, while Marist finished ninth. Marist’s Mary Jane Hill led local girls 4A finishers with a 19:10.1 for ninth place; the Spartans were seventh and Cottage Grove was eighth in the girls’ standings.

Siuslaw takes 3A boys title behind Stone’s win

Before Saturday’s meet began, Henry Stone — the owner of the second-fastest 5K time in the state for 3A — sang the national anthem with the Siuslaw choir. It was that, he said, or take voice lessons alone. 

He chose a team, and two hours later, Stone, the frontman of Siuslaw’s title charge, crossed the finish first, leading his other team to a second straight 3A boys title. The Vikings put seven runners in the top 24, edging second-place Neah-Kah-Nie by 11 points.

“That was the best I’ve felt in a race,” Stone said.

He’s been battling a pinched nerve in his hip for the past week, but shook it off to take the lead at 4K after sitting in the lead pack for the first part of the race. He ran his final kilometer in 2:57, outpacing Neah-Kah-Nie’s Gus Kirby to seal the win.

“Going into the race, I wasn’t sure how my hip was going to feel, but I started and I was like, ‘Okay, I think I’m going to be okay, just one step at a time,” Stone said. 

Siuslaw’s Bentley Nelson finished fifth in 16:11.1, with Ezra King in 11th and four other runners between 19th and 24th. Several of them play soccer together, Stone said, and halfway through the year they recommitted to “be really intentional” and chase down the title.

“I didn’t say a word to them,” head coach Chris Johnson said. “Because they were here last year, and they won, and they know more about this race than I do, because I’ve never won it as a team. So sometimes you just let the horses run.”

Siuslaw’s girls finished fifth in the 3A team race, led by 19th-place freshman Hosanna Stone.

In the 1A/2A girls race, Triangle Lake sophomore Austyn Hartwig led the local finishers, placing 16th with a 21:12.4.