Panther women’s cross country are winners of their second straight meet.
After claiming a team title at the WNC Carnival in Hendersonville Aug. 23, on Sept. 13 the team traveled to the Cherokee Mother Town for the Keith Payne Memorial Invitational. With marked improvements from their men’s and women’s teams alike, Franklin entered the second half of the season with a full head of steam.
“The girls won, and the boys came in fourth,” said head coach Melissa Ward of the trip to the Kituwah Mound near Bryson City. “On average, our girls have improved by a minute and 20 seconds compared to the last 5K we did three weeks ago, so that was a good thing. And same on the boys’ team – the boys were closer to a minute’s improvement on average. Some had greater improvement – I think Evan [Pyles] dropped like two minutes on his – so on average, great improvement overall for both teams.”
On the girls side, Amy Mendoza Lopez led the way once again for Franklin, placing third overall in a 62-person race with a time of 19:51.43. Morgan Cress placed ninth overall in 21:16.79, followed in quick succession by Abigail Pope (12th, 21:37.81), Mindi Holbrooks (13th, 22:14.86) and Breanna Pendergrass (15th, 22:24.07). Lana Walker, Abigail Timan and Molly Radecki also placed back-to-back in 20th-22nd, followed by Keiri Muñoz (36th), Kai Pelletier (37th) and Cheyenne Plemmons (56th).
Excluding runners not representing full teams, overall the numerical values of Franklin’s top five finishes (3+8+10+11+13) added up to 45, the lowest score out of six teams in the women’s varsity race. These six teams included Franklin’s Mountain Eight Conference rivals Tuscola (2nd, 58) and Smoky Mountain (4th, 104).
On the boys side, Ken Modlin (14th, 18:31.93), Pyles (17th, 18:38.76) and promising freshman Jase Rogers (21st, 18:49.76) led the way for Franklin in a 96-person race. After Rogers, Conner Ramey (36th, 20:37.64), Malik Walker (40th, 20:53.32) and Timothy Bishop (43rd, 21:06.48) finished in quick succession, followed by Zeke Moffitt in 89th.
As a team Franklin’s top five scores (14+17+19+31+34) added up to 115, good for fourth overall in the nine-team race and ahead of seventh-place Smoky Mountain’s 151.
After the race at Kituwah, Franklin had just two more meets remaining this regular season before the Mountain Eight Conference Championships in Hendersonville Oct. 14. Ahead of the Wingfoot XC Classic in Cartersville, Ga., Sept. 20; and the Asics Invitational in Fairburn Ga., Oct. 4, Ward said the team would begin to ramp up their training.
“We’ve done a lot of tempo with hills and kind of longer training, so this will be more speed work,” she said.
“We’ll run a little bit on the track and obviously still keep hills involved, but maybe not as long of hills, so we’ll transition the training a little bit. The next two meets are super-competitive – not as flat and easy of a course, but really good competition, so that could still be a driving force for the team. Asics, being our second race from now, is going to be a nice one to really see where is our speed training is at.”