Practice pays off for Reiss at 2A girls’ state cross country

The Bellingham cross country team has a secret weapon when it comes to preparing for the Class 2A State Championship.

The Red Raiders coaching staff has found the perfect training ground at Sunnyland Park to get their runners ready to tackle the 5,000-meter course on the Sun Willows Golf Course in Pasco, and they’ve used it so much sophomore boys’ runner Cade Brown joked Bellingham runners “almost hate it.”

“We all know we go there for our hardest workouts,” freshman girls’ runner Annika Reiss said in a phone interview. “It gets tiring, because we do the same loop over and over, but it definitely helps, so I’m OK with it.”

There’s little doubt that it helped Reiss in her first trip to Pasco for the girls’ championship race on Saturday, Nov. 7. The freshman turned in yet another impressive performance finishing second to Spokane East Valley senior Brittany Aquino by less than three seconds. Reiss finished in 18 minutes, 31.7 seconds.

“I’m feeling real good,” Reiss said. “I think I had a good race. It was nice to have such a talented girl I could pace off. ... Coming in I knew to look for her, so I got right behind her. She had a strong start. I tried making a move late, but she surged ahead at the finish.”

Reiss credited the training at Sunnyland Park with helping her get off to the good start to pick up Aquino, as the practice course Bellingham uses is grass and has a downhill portion at the start, much like the state course.

“We do a lot of time trials on it, so it really helps you learn how to get a good starting position,” Reiss said.

Finishing right behind Reiss was Sehome’s Abby Johnson in 19:02.8. Johnson’s strong run help Sehome finish second with 116 points behind champion Issaquah Liberty’s 75.

Liberty’s win ended the Mariners’ three-year stranglehold on the 2A girls’ team title and marked only the second time in the past decade Sehome didn’t claim the championship.

Despite that, Sehome was quite pleased with where it finished Saturday, especially after the team lost four of its top six runners expected to return from last season to ailments or other issues this year, coach Kevin Ryan said.

“We went up against some challenging teams,” Johnson said in a phone interview. “Second place is something to be proud of, especially with the way the girls ran. We really improved. ... I’m really proud of how everyone ran.”

Sophomore Emma Hageman finished 26th in 19:58.3, junior Emma Clark was 38th in 20:13.3, freshman Claire Rowan-Arnett was 39th in 20:15.4, junior Kate Rose was 47th in 20:28.6 and senior Dana Ringler was 48th in 20:30.2, giving Sehome all five scoring runners in the top 50.

And, when you add in that Johnson is a junior, four of those five are expected back next year.

And Johnson ran a strong race Saturday, keeping contact with the leaders throughout and knocking more than 20 seconds off her time from 2014.

“I improved from last year a lot,” said. “I was hoping to get second and see if I could PR. I didn’t know how I could realistically do that with the challenges I was up against, but I thought I ran good.”

With Reiss’ help, Bellingham placed seventh with 198 points, and like Sehome, they should have a lot of runners back next year.

Freshman Grace Much finished 42nd (20:19.5), sophomore Quincy Gale was 67th (20:50.2), sophomore Rosie Thompson was 70th (20:53.4) and senior Sophia Laws was 90th (21:14.1).

“We can definitely grow from today, because we have such young team,” Reiss said. “Everyone ran a great race and did a good job of supporting everyone.”

This story was originally published November 7, 2015 at 8:19 PM with the headline "Practice pays off for Reiss at 2A girls’ state cross country."