Murphy Kimball outleaned Dimond’s Dash Dicang at the finish line to secure the West Eagles a sweep of the team titles Wednesday at the annual Steel Bucket Relay cross country race at Kincaid Park.
The Cook Inlet Conference meet was held at the Jodhpur Trailhead and featured four runners per team. The race was 8.8 kilometers long, with each runner going 2.2 kilometers.
West and Dimond both finished the boys race with times of 29 minutes, 12 seconds, but Kimball claimed a narrow victory for the Eagles in the back-and-forth race.
West took an eight-second lead on Ethan Eski’s opening leg, but Dimond led by two seconds after Max Johnson’s second leg.
Then came Jared Gardiner, who clocked the day’s fastest time to extend Dimond’s lead to 40 seconds after three legs. In the anchor leg, Kimball closed the gap for West by running the second-best time of the day.
Gardiner was the only runner to finish in less than seven minutes. His time of 6:57 was 10 seconds faster than Kimball’s 7:07.
In the girls race, West beat Dimond by 49 seconds with a time of 34:44.
Payton Smith turned in the day’s top time to give the Eagles the lead after the first leg, but Dimond seized the lead in the second leg courtesy of Emily Erickson, who ran the second-fastest time of the day.
After that it was all West as Lily Pannkuk and Zoe Rogers turned in dominant runs to pull away from the Lynx.
Smith paced the girls in 8:08, followed by Erickson in 8:13.
Boys
1. West A 29:12 (Eski, Main, Turchaninov, Kimball)
2. Dimond A 29:12 (Prosser, Johnson, Gardiner, Dicang)
3. West B 29:47 (Jenkins, Soberay, Chisolm, Hanley)
4. West C 30:37 (Rogers, Menkens, Garon-Barendregt, Yi)
5. Dimond B 31:49 (Kam-Magruder, Kaczorowski, Skaling, Jackson)
6. West D 32:35 (Bold, Robinson, Flowers, Dosek)
7. Dimond D 32:50 (Johnson, Driskell, DeWall, Andresen)
8. Dimond C 32:53 (Glover, Erickson, O’Hara, Rygh)
9. West E 34:31 (Brown, Erickson, Fineman, Dudley)
10. West F 35:15 (Maves, Rush, Barber, Flanagan)
Top 10 individual times
1. Jared Gardiner (D) 6:57
2. Murphy Kimball (W) 7:07
3. Ethan Eski (W) 7:08
4. Max Johnson (D) 7:11
5. Nicholas Prosser (D) 7:15
6. Liam Chisolm (W) 7:16
7. Isaac Main (W) 7:20
8. Diego Jenkins (W) 7:24
9. Hatcher Menkens (W) 7:26
10. Dylan Soberay (W) 7:28
Girls
1. West A 34:44 (Smith, Meyers, Pannkuk, Rogers)
2. DImond A 35:33 (Campbell, Erickson, Seibert, McBride)
3. West B 37:57 (Yi, Little, Dorris, Colberg)
4. West C 39:00 (Tuttle-Ray, Latva-Kiskola, Bland, Barnett)
5. Dimond B 39:45 (Johnsen, McCormack, Baldwin, Gaskill)
6. West D 40:30 (Legate, Meyers, Leclaire, Thomas)
7. West E 42:13 (Goodal, Wuttke, Shein, Klieforth)
8. Dimond C 44:34 (Gardiner, Hartman, McWhite, Paulson)
9. West F 47:07 (Rosso, Thomas, Lawrence, Hobbe)
10. West G 48:12 (Parr, Thomas, Yien, Skidmore)
Top 10 individual times
1. Payton Smith (W) 8:08
2. Emily Erickson (D) 8:13
3. Zoe Rogers (W) 8:45
4. Avrey Campbell (D) 8:46
5. Lily Pannkuk (W) 8:53
6. Sophia Mayers (W) 8:58
7. Nora McBride (D) 9:07
8. Piper Sears (W) 9:08
9. Tarja Latva-Kiskola (W) 9:09
10. Berit Meyers (W) 9:11