Watauga girls win conference meet
By Bill Cain

MORGANTON — Watauga’s girls’ cross country team came into Wednesday’s Northwestern 4-A Conference championship meet held together with athletic tape and shoe laces, but still held off a charging Freedom team to win the conference title.

The boys’ team finished third, edging McDowell by one point. Their top

Watauga's Dolly Dollars won the NWC Championship meet with a time of 20:07. Photo by Marie Freeman

runner, Luke Nelson, was unable to finish as well as he had been this season. He was running with a strained hamstring muscle, but still finished the race.

The girls crossed the finish line 1, 4, 6, 10, 11 to win the meet. Dolly Dollars won the meet in a time of 20:07. After pulling out of Saturday’s race at Tanglewood prematurely, she said she was determined to run hard Wednesday regardless of pain.

“(Tuesday) one of my legs randomly started hurting and I was questioning how well or how bad I was going to do on this course,” Dollars said. “But after last Saturday, when I made the worst mistake by dropping out, I decided that no matter how bad it hurt, I was going to do my best and still try to get first.”

Dollars said she learned from her mistake and it made her push harder Wednesday.
The girls were almost caught by a Freedom team that moved girls up in the standings, but was unable to match Watauga’s presence up front.

“Freedom is much improved and they were on a mission today,” Watauga coach Randy McDonough said. “I could tell from the time the gun went off. But our girls did what they had to. We had several girls coming back from injuries and our top three came back with flying colors.”

McDonough was unsure at the beginning of the day how many of his girls would finish the race, but said the freshmen and Kellen Moore all stepped up and supported the top runners well.

Meaghan Dolan finished fourth in a time of 21:00 and Ava Zimmerman took sixth in 21:13. Janeli Smith and Bridgette McLean finished 10th and 11th with times of 21:44 and 21:53, respectively. Moore took 18th with a time of 22:36 and Conley Lyons rounded out Watauga’s top seven in 29th with a time of 23:49.

Watauga’s girls had swept the regular season meets against conference opponents, but McDonough said they knew none of that mattered.

“They were confident, but like we tell them, they don’t crown a regular season champion, it’s just this one meet and you’ve got to perform on the day of,” he said. “But they came and they did that.”

For Dollars, the biggest boost in confidence came in a meet when Dolan was assigned to pace a group of younger runners and Dollars had to assume front-runner responsibilities.

“When we were racing against all the girls a week or two ago and Meaghan was pacing the other girls, I had to step it up and we still won,” she said. “At that point I was pretty sure that even if Meaghan wasn’t at full strength, we were still going to win, even if I fell back.”

The boys were not as fortunate when their top runner, Nelson, was running injured. Nelson, usually one of the top three finishers in the conference, was running in the top 15 about halfway through the race, but dropped to 33rd by the finish with a time of 19:08 while basically running on one leg.

“He was in a lot of pain and said the leg just wouldn’t go where he wanted it to go,” McDonough said. “But he stuck with it and hanged in there. What the future holds for him with running in regionals, we’ll have to see as we go along. But I was proud of him for toughing it out. He has a lot of pride. It would have been easy for him to see that he wasn’t in his normal third place in the conference and pull out but he didn’t. He did what he could to try to help the team.”

Even if the Pioneers had run a perfect race, McDonough was not convinced they could overcome South Caldwell. The Spartans, led by former Watauga distance coach Jason Childress, placed 2, 5, 6, 8, 11 to win the championship and was paced by Ryan Shultz, who took second with a time of 16:28. The race was won by McDowell’s Isaiah Shirlen in a time of 16:14.

Watauga was led by Isaac Smith in 10th with a time of 17:44. Smith said his performance left him with mixed feelings.

“I was pleased with my finish to some degree,” Smith said. “I made all-conference, but I was still disappointed because so many South Caldwell guys finished in front of me. They had a great race and put four guys in front of our first guy.”

Brooks Forsyth and Will Barbour took 14th and 15th in times of 18:03 and 18:09, respectively. Jordan Trivette and Sina Tashakkori finished 19th and 20th with times of 18:26 and 18:31, respectively. Tashakkori’s time was four seconds faster than Freedom’s John Collette and gave Watauga third place by a point over McDowell.

Smith said watching Nelson fall back in the field was disheartening, and mixed with the hot conditions, made the race tougher. But he said the team’s problem is more in their heads than anything.

“Right now, our problem is completely mental,” he said. “We’ve done the training and worked hard all season and we’re there physically. But something about the top seven, we’re just not clicking yet.”

Now both teams have a week and a half to get ready for the Western Regional, also held in Morganton. McDonough thinks the girls should do well but the boys have a little more work to do before the Oct. 29 meet.

“We’ve got a week and a half to see what we can do, if we can pull these guys together,” he said. “We’ve got a lot of pulling together in the next week, but they’re pretty tough and I think they can come back from this.”

                                                                                                        NWC Cross Country meet
Results of the Northwestern 4-A Conference Cross Country Championships.
Boys’ team results:
1, South Caldwell, 32; 2, Freedom, 58; 3, Watauga, 78; 4, McDowell, 79; 5, A.C. Reynolds, 154; 6, East Burke, 164; 7, Alexander Central, 174.
Watauga’s boys individual results:
10, I. Smith, 17:44; 14, Forsyth, 18:03; 15, Barbour, 18:09; 19, Trivette, 18:26; 20, Tashakkori. 18:31; 27, Sanders, 18:52; 33, Nelson, 19:08; 34, T. Holden, 19:10; 37, P. Fuller, 19:16; 43, McGuinn, 19:23; 54, Templeton, 19:57; 60, Knutson, 20:13; 61, Vollmer, 20:13; 80, Boyd, 21:16; 84, T. McDonough, 21:37; 86, Keeter-Scarlotta, 22:02; 89, Hay, 22:27; 94, Stockamp, 22:41; 96, Aldridge, 22:45; 97, Pouder, 22:58; 98, Todd, 23:09; 100, Anderson, 23:18; 101, Steele, 23:20; 109, Street, 24:51; 111, Burkhart, 27:25; 113, Chesnutt, 30:55; 114, Testerman, 31:10.
Girls’ team results:
1, Watauga, 32; 2, Freedom, 67; 3, South Caldwell, 81; 4, A.C. Reynolds, 92; 5, Alexander Central, 127; 6, East Burke, 135; 7, McDowell, 162.
Watauga’s girls’ individual results:
1, D. Dollars, 20:07; 4, Dolan, 21:00; 6, Zimmerman, 21:13; 10, J. Smith, 21:44; 11, McLean, 21:53; 18, Moore, 22:36; 29, Lyons, 23:49; 31, Glaser, 23:54; 33, Prevost, 24:13; 40, M. Dollars, 24:56; 43, Culatta, 25:04; 47, R. Smith, 25:36; 50, Freeman, 25:48; 56, M. Holden, 26:00; 64, A. Fuller, 26:59; 69, Rumley, 27:31; 72, Hopkins, 28:09; 76, Kennedy, 30:20; 80, Norwood, 32:30.