Emporia High will send four cross country runners to State next Saturday, but the Spartans wanted to send a whole lot more.
Home-course advantage didn’t translate to team success for Emporia at Saturday’s Class 5A Regional at Jones Park. The Spartans’ top runners on each side — Jenna Stanbrough for the girls and Tyler Tilton for the boys — each finished third to qualify for State with ease, and Abigail Chiroy and Drew Detwiler joined them with State-qualifying runs. But both Spartan teams finished fourth, one spot out of qualifying to send the whole squad to Rim Rock Farm. That performance left their coach unsatisfied.
“We knew coming in that there was probably four teams competing for three spots,” EHS coach Mark Stanbrough said. “Girls side was probably going to be a little bit harder, because the quality of the teams were a little bit better. Our goal was to step up and try to qualify, and we didn’t get it done today.”
Jenna Stanbrough will get to take her last crack at State next week. The senior ran Saturday’s 4K in a time of 16 minutes, 8.04 seconds, a little more than five seconds behind second-place finisher Shannon Ahlstedt of Newton. Chiroy, a sophomore, finished in 16:39.09, good for ninth place.
“Obviously, I’m happy that I qualified for State,” Jenna Stanbrough said. “But I wish I would’ve kept contact with the second-place girl from Newton a little more, because then I feel like I could’ve kicked her at the end. But other than that, I’m happy with how I performed.”
Alexa Main finished in 27th place for the Spartans. Abbey Davies, Joslyn Barton and Sydney Main finished in 33rd, 34th and 35th places, respectively, and Cindy Meinholdt finished 38th. The individual champion was MacKenzie Maki of Kapaun, who finished in 14:55.13. The Spartan girls finished with 106 points, behind Regional champions Newton (37), second-place Kapaun (66) and McPherson (78).
The junior Tilton will head back to State after clocking a 5K run of 17:29.52, finishing behind Adam Porter of McPherson (16:52.31) and Laban Lalouette of Newton (17:26.08). Detwiler, a sophomore, finished 11th with a time of 18:03.45.
Emporia’s boys had 98 team points; McPherson won the region with 36, followed by Newton with 78 and Kapaun with 79. Jack Heim finished in 23rd place for the Spartans, Matt Fry finished 27th, Donny Tennal finished 34th, Devin Hutchinson finished 45th and Brandon Charbonneau finished 50th.
“We got some people in,” Mark Stanbrough said. “I think those four have been the most consistent in terms of performance this year, so those are probably the four, if anybody qualified, those four probably deserve it the most.
“It’s just been a strange year. We’ve had people sick; we haven’t ran our entire team once in one meet. People have been sick or injured throughout the year. We just haven’t had much consistency up and down with people, and we just didn’t quite get the job done today.”
Adam Porter of McPherson won the individual Regional title, clocking a 16:52.31.
The Class 5A boys race at Rim Rock Farm, located outside Lawrence, begins next Saturday at 10:30 a.m. The 5A girls race will begin at 11:30 a.m.
Saturday at Jones Park
Girls
Team scores
Newton 37, Kapaun Mt. Carmel 66, McPherson 78, Emporia 106, Andover Central 125, Andover 151, Salina Central 167, Salina South 196.
Emporia results
3. Stanbrough, 16:08.04; 9. Chiroy, 16:39.09; 27. A. Main, 18:26.86; 33. Davies 18:45.70; 34. Barton, 18:56.87; 35. S. Main, 18:59.08; 38. Meinholdt, 19:18.88.
Boys
Team scores
McPherson 36, Newton 78, Kapaun Mt. Carmel 79, Emporia 98, Andover Central 117, Andover 125, Salina South 157, Salina Central 234.
Emporia results
3. Tilton, 17:29.52; 11. Detwiler, 18:03.45; 23. Heim, 18:47.62; 27. Fry, 18:52.70; 34. Tennal, 19:13.01; 45. Hutchinson, 20:44.67; 50. Charbonneau, 22:25.93.
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