Washington State HS XC 2025 Season

What is slow about the Hermiston Melon Fest course? It's run around baseball fields and has a good amount of gravel

Half joke since Hermiston (Oregon) competes in the WIAA due to hardship next closest OR 5A school is a 2+ hour drive for conference play so they compete in the Mid-Columbia Conference where the furthest competition is 40 minutes away

The heat typically slows that course down. This year may be an outlier due to better competition (Rocky and Kamiakin ran well) and it wasn't as hot (73 degrees at the start)

I'm just now looking at results across the weekend. Comparing Hermiston this year to Hermiston last year and knowing the progression that program made, they are definitely podium threat and I wouldn't sleep on them for 3A.

That Melon Fest Course is fairly challenging. It is on a middle school campus so the grass is a bit clunky and grabby, not super smooth. Both loops have some good gradual climbs and a few rollers along the way. If it was run toward the end of the season in cool temps it might be a bit quicker, but early season there's some rust for most kids and the sun was beating pretty good on Saturday (mid 70s for Varsity Boys up to 80s for the JV races). It is definitely not some of the courses where you see multiple boys sub 15 and girls breaking 17.

athletic.net

Track & Field, Cross Country Results, Statistics

Meet results and team scores.

Link:www.athletic.net/CrossCountry/meet/253...

Results from GearUp NW Preview at Sehome.

We finally get big meets and real head-to-heads amongst the contenders. Steilacoom and Mook lead the way. Looks like these are the notable teams at the various invites this Saturday. What should we be looking for? What are the predictions? Of note if people try to compare times later between the different meets later: The Mook course is always real fast. It is pretty flat and a little short on a golf course and it tends to generate times as fast or faster than Hole in the Wall (plenty of seasons' bests are from the Mook).

Steilacoom:
Camas
Central Kitsap
Eisenhower
Ellensburg
Seattle Prep
Inglemoor
Vashon Island
Olympia
Kamiakin
Stadium
Curtis
Tahoma
Yelm
Gig Harbor
Liberty

Mook:
Mercer Island
Sehome
Bainbridge
Gonzaga Prep
Lynden Christian
Lincoln
Issaquah
Cedar Park

Mountain West Classic:
Shadle Park
Cheney
Mead
North Central
Lewis & Clark
Mt. Spokane

South Whidbey:
South Whidbey
Redmond
Kamiak

PLU:
South Kitsap (no one else of note--Isaac Benjamin appears to be making his real 2025 debut at Portland XC the following Friday)

Looks like Curtis is racing their varsity at The Mook

Going to try this - weekly rankings based on Invite performances

Mercer Island (if you plug in Thomas)
Stadium
Mead
Redmond

Tahoma
Sehome
Kamiakin
Hermiston
Curtis
Cedar Park Christian (Bothell)
Shorewood
Central Kitsap
Central Valley
Cheney
Gonzaga Prep
Glacier Peak
Bellarmine Prep
Yelm
Burlington-Edison
Bishop Blanchet
Lakewood
Arlington
Shadle Park
Seattle Prep
Anacortes

I am sure I am missing a few teams, and maybe a team or two didn't race individuals that I did not consider. That will be the fun part with this, updating it weekly and see how teams progress.

Kamiakin too low.

They probably should be above Sehome. But Sehome impressed over the weekend and I bet they will look great at The Mook.

Excited to see Tahoma versus Kamiakin. Tahoma has not ran anything yet but has some great returners from track.

Kamiakin has a close pack but has no front runner like most of the top schools have. Their pack will broken up by Stadium, Mead's front runners, and Redmond.

Re Fort Steilacoom entries:

Camas and Central Kitsap have both submitted their entries and they have not entered their top runners. Cohen Butler also didn't race with his team at Ultimook (although he ran in the Open race there). He's on Strava and running pretty normally though. Mana Voss has been running won Bellermine last week (although he ran slower than last year). Anyone know what the deal is?

Without them, top entries look to be Kian Compton (Eisenhower, 2024 SB 15:18, no non-intra-team results for 2025 but was 13th at NXR), Mystic Hammond (Ellensburg, 2024 SB 15:28, limited results suggest he's at least as fit as last year), Henry Herb (Seattle Prep, 2024 SB 15:31, impressive win at Sehome last weekend with 9:44 over 2 miles),
Quenton Lanese (Olympia, 2025 SB 15:31), and Joshua Healy (Vashon Island, 2024 SB 15:43, no results this year, didn't run at league meet with team on Tuesday, no Strava since end of August). Anyone I'm missing? Any predictions?

Im going to make some wild bets

1 Kamiakin:
2 Stadium:
3 Tahoma:
4 Seattle Prep:
5 Yelm:
6 Gig Harbor:
7 Olympia:
8 Skyline:
9 West Linn:
10 Puyallup:

Maybe I was too harsh on Kamiakin in my initial rankings - based off how athletes did from their first invites to Steilacoom. Tahoma is a just a huge unknown right now, they could be anywhere in the top 5 so put them in the middle.

Kian Compton
Quenton Lanese
Mystic Hammond
Henry Herb
Kayden Thornock

My top 5 individuals. Kian will probably win by 10-20 seconds, he is used to running solo after last year.

I am really more interested in high the Mountain West Classic shakes out. Not a lot of Washington implications but I want to see how Mead does against real competition.

Mana Voss was just added to the entries for Steilacoom. Should be a good race for the win between him and Compton. expect those two to be first and second by a healthy margin with a lively race for third amongst those mentioned above.

She is selected for the World Mountain and Trailrunning Championships at Canfranc/Spain next week. U20 classic up&down races are at sunday 28/9

Oh good! Glad they are racing a full team.

updated individuals

Kian Compton
Mana Voss
Henry Herb
Mystic Hammond
Quenton Lanese

teams

Kamiakin:
Stadium:
Tahoma:
Gig Harbor:
Central Kitsap:

Seattle Prep:
Yelm:
Camas:
Olympia:

Girls:

Sydney Kosa
Lejla Carlsson
Ella Koch
Sara Thompson
Jaycee Jenkins

Tahoma

Olympia

West Linn

Gig Harbor

Inglemoor

Camas

Kamiakin

Union

Ellensburg

Woodinville

I agree with this without any alterations. I think Compton and Voss are out ahead fast with a tight finish and the winner close to 15 flat. I think the other three will form their other pack and finish close to 15:20 with the finish in the order you identified based on their relative kicks. There's a chance Hammond drops off before the end but I think he'll be there and will outkick Lanese. Even without Butler, it'll be a historically fast year for the race.

As for the teams, Kamiakin will be missing their low stick but their pack running is too strong and they'll win. Wish Seattle Prep and Olympia had more depth--especially with how big Olympia is and the talent they get, you'd think they'd challenge annually.

Entries are in for The Mook. Looks like it's gonna be a scorcher. Flat and slightly short, times are going to be pretty insane. Probably the WA meet of the weekend despite it being mostly OR teams. Will be really interesting to see how Mercer Island does.

athletic.net

Track & Field, Cross Country Results, Statistics

Meet results and team scores.

Link:www.athletic.net/CrossCountry/meet/253...

I do not see how the Mook could be the meet of the weekend. Mercer will have a hard time beating Lincoln without Staddon Smith. I'd love to be wrong though!

Jesuit will dominate the field, Lincoln will be second. I think the most entertaining thing to watch will be how close a private school like CPC (bothell) can be to these bigger schools.

Sure it is flat and fast but times don't mean much in XC anyways.

Mountain West will be more interesting since it will feature the top Washington school, Mead, against a top5 Northwest team, Bozeman

This weekend will show who the contenders and pretenders are in Washington.

I think this year will be more competitive than last year for Steilacoom. It'll take sub 15:50 to be top 10, top 20 will probably all be under 16. Will be a good battle!