On Saturday, Sept. 23, the Cedarcrest cross country squad competed at the Bellevue Cross Country Invitational which is held at Lake Sammamish State Park.

This year’s Bellevue Invitational had 57 school attend, which meant varsity runners had to compete in flights where each runners would pair up based on rank. Each of the teams top two runners ran together and the third and fourth placers ran together.

The Cedarcrest team performed well for being one of the smaller school in attendance with an 11th place finish for the varsity boys and a 14th place finish for the varsity girls. When compared only to other 2A schools, the boys took first and the girls took second.

In the Cedarcrest internal top 10 ranking for the event, Grant Van Valkenburg ran a 15:57 for second place behind James Conrick who finished two seconds faster with a 15:55. Elsie Dombek ran 19:30 which is tied for fourth with Brenna Eldredge. That knocked off a three way tie from last year with Madi Shinn, Alicia Krivanek and Lily Krueger.

While the runners had a good day at the event, many of them felt they could have done better.

The coaches thought Cedarcrest was successful overall at the Bellevue Invite and awarded Athlete of the Meet to Austin Ward, Cade LaTurner, Kyle Tracy, Elsie Dombek and Jenna Young. Honorable Mentions included Lance Stupfel, Brennan LeBlanc, Jake Ward, Noah Pace, Kelly Hall, Alicia Krivanek and Hannah Brabec.

On Saturday, Sept. 30, the top runners form Cedarcrest will travel to Portland for the Nike Portland XC meet where they will compete against 162 teams from eight states, including British Colombia.

Full results from the Bellevue Cross Country Invitational can be found at https://www.athletic.net/CrossCountry/Results/Meet.aspx?Meet=130662#394