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Carl Baird was the third place finisher overall for the 5000 meter run and the first finisher for Swain High’s team. -
Sophomore Marden Harvey runs in the 5000 meter run at Kituwah, for which she finished with a time of 22:17.
Larry Griffin
lgriffin@thesmokymountaintimes.com
Feet hit the ground running early Saturday morning, Sept. 16, at Kituwah for the Swain County High cross-country meet, in which Swain took first place in both boys’ and girls’ 5000 meter run events.
The event was a rare one this season as it was a SMC Conference match, which the team has said it won’t be focusing on as much this year, instead going for more statewide events.
After the middle school runners competed at 8 a.m., the varsity teams for Swain and several rival schools got in position. The boys took off shortly after 9 a.m. and the girls followed around 9:30 once the boys were done.
Swain County came out ahead of the pack in both the boys and girls races, with the Maroon Devils scoring 35 points, ahead of Franklin with 49, Hayesville with 77 and Cherokee with 106. The boys’ average time was 17:12. The Lady Devils took home the gold with 29 points, ahead of rivals Franklin with 46, Hayesville with 77 and Tri-County Early College with 90. The average time for the girls’ team was 20:59.
For individual scores, the Maroon Devils’ top runners on Saturday were Carl Baird, who finished in third place with a time of 16:43, followed immediately by fourth-place finisher Kane Jones, with a time of 16:55.
Following them, Connor Brown finished in seventh place with a time of 17:01, while Abhi Patel finished 10th with a time of 17:28.
The girls’ team saw Annie Lewis in second place overall with a time of 19:32, while Angel Lomelli came in fourth with a time of 20:36, and Lily Bjerkness came in ninth place with a time of 21:22 and Emily Grey Stargell finished in 21:38, placing her 12th.
The day started cool and foggy, though the sun came out and began to warm the day by the time the high school girls’ teams began to run.
Coach Keith Payne praised the team for running on what he said was a unique course for the team.
“The gravel roads around the mound make for a fast and flat race without going on any pavement. It is one of the fastest courses in the state and by far the most special,” he wrote in an email.
The course sees the runners start in the open field, but after the first mile, the runners are out of sight of the spectators, running toward the bottom of Kituwah which is less visible for people.
At around 650 meters left, the runners reappear in view for the last stretch of the race.
On Saturday Kituwah was crowded with people setting up chairs and shaded areas to cheer on their loved ones and children played in the fields, sometimes getting rowdy. At one point, as everyone waited at the finish line, a teacher had to shout, “Don’t throw corn!”
Among those was Blain Shobe, who is Lomelli’s grandfather. He said he was glad to be there to watch her run. “I think they do well as a team. They’re running pretty confident,” he said.
Payne commended the runners for a good job: “I think the work we have been doing over the past month is starting to pay off. I am impressed with their poise and grit.”
He said he knew Swain’s decision to pull out of many Smoky Mountain Conference events this year has not been entirely well-received, but Payne thought it was the right decision for the team’s development.
“My job is to prepare my teams to compete on any level and sometimes that means running races that directly compete against many of the SMC races. We wanted to run on the state course, and the only time we could was last Friday, meaning we couldn’t race at Cherokee last week. We want to race other top 1A programs in the state and they will not come here, so we have to go to them,” he said.
On Tuesday, Sept. 19, at their afternoon practice at Deep Creek, Swain County High senior Kane Jones said the race “felt really good.”
“I felt like I was coasting for most of it. At the next meet, I could definitely shave another 30 seconds off my time,” he said.
Jones was hanging with fellow senior Connor Lambert along with Coach Payne outside in the slightly cooling weather. The three of them got to talking about the team’s decision to opt out of the conference matches. Lambert said he thought it was a good idea because it “gives us competition that otherwise we would not see.”
Payne said Saturday’s Kituwah meet only had 66 athletes competing between all the schools, where the Friday Night Lights event they competed in earlier this month had over 400.
“If we go to a state competition with 150 athletes, it will seem small,” Payne said. “We won’t get out there and go ‘ooh, look how big it is,’ all big eyed.”
He added that, as of the Kituwah meet, both the boys’ and girls’ cross country teams were #1 in the state right now. Their next meet is the Hare & Hound this Saturday, Sept. 23.