Traverse City Record-Eagle

Cross Country

September 23, 2009

Trojan girls strong in cross country opener

Central wins first BNC meet; Alpena's Stepanski individual champion

BY DENNIS CHASE

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TRAVERSE CITY -- Traverse City Central coach Lisa Taylor admits she's always a little nervous about the first Big North Conference cross country meet of the season.

"As I say every year, it's always a relief to get this first one over with -- to see what we have to work on and to see what the conference is going to look like," she said.

If Tuesday's girls race is any indication, it's going to look a lot like the previous years. The Trojans, the defending Division I state champions, claimed five of the top eight spots to easily capture the Big North opener at Hickory Hills. Central finished with 26 points. Traverse City West edged Alpena 54-60 for second.

"We've had years where we've had super strong conferences," Taylor said. "These Tuesday meets can really add a lot of extra stress on the kids. To have a nice performance like we had today was a big relief. I thought they looked good, but there's still a lot of work to do."

Alpena sophomore Taylor Stepanski was the overall winner in 19:48. She was followed by seven Traverse City runners -- Central's Julia Otwell (20:10) and Katie Perkins (20:30), West's Marcy Marek (20:33) and Hannah Rickard (20:45), and Central's Maren Bahra (20:48), Sam Ehle (20:56) and Hannah DeBartoli (21:07).

"I thought our team did well," Otwell said.

The Trojans were coming off a seventh-place finish at the Spartan Invitational last Friday.

"We've been down the last week," Bahra said. "We feel we haven't done our best. But this should give us a boost.

"We were all together today. We kept a good pack. That's our goal."

This was the first time a Big North meet has been held at Hickory Hills.

"We practiced here three days ago and that helped," Bahra said. "We knew where to cut in, where to surge. We did the best we could today."

West, an emerging program under coach Eric Houghton, was led by its tandem of Marek and Rickard.

"They've been our one-two (punch)," Houghton said. "It's nice to have that. And there's a competition among them that makes them better."

The Titans three other counters were Rachael Favela (12th in 21:46), Kaylee Vandommelen (14th in 21:57) and Lilia Favela (19th in 22:38).

"We're getting better, we're getting closer," Marek said.

Of the top five, Lilia Favela is the lone senior.

"We have 36 girls out," Houghton said. "We're ecstatic. We have a ton of freshmen. They're having fun and working hard."

West, the host school, ran a race on the Hickory Hills course earlier this month.

"I bet 95 percent of the girls ran faster this time," Houghton said. "From top to bottom, to see that kind of improvement is really cool. I'm real pleased with our effort."

As was Taylor with Central's.

"We have the monkey on our back, being the defending state champ," Taylor said. "But we're setting our sights high."

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