Eagles take individual and team titles at SWC cross country meet

Kaitlyn Reese set a new conference record and ran the second-fastest time ever at Lorain County Community College Saturday at the Southwestern Conference cross country championships, leading the Eagles to their fifth consecutive conference title. Reese, the defending champion, ran a time of 17 minutes, 59.72 seconds over the challenging 5,000-meter course, breaking the SWC mark of 18:16.80 set by Katie Clute of Olmsted Falls in 2022. Clute owns the all-time course record of 17:49.70, which she set in the 2022 district meet. Reese’s time Saturday was her personal best at LCCC and is the second-fastest ever run on the current course. “The goal for her was to PR, which she did by about six seconds,” said coach Justin Carroll. “It’s awesome that she was able to do that knowing the workouts that we’ve been doing.” Avon, ranked fourth in the state in Division I, dominated the race by scoring a paltry 21 points. Olmsted Falls was second with 68, followed by Amherst with 71. Ironically, with a new setup of cross country having Division I teams bypass the district meet straight into regionals, the Eagles actually trained through the week, meaning they raced on tired legs at the conference meet. “Overall, I was very happy,” said coach Justin Carroll. “We’ve been really working hard these last few weeks, training through it, just like many teams. So, for them to do what they did today with that training, it’s a huge step forward, a confidence booster. We’re grinding it out, even the week of conference, and for them to still perform the way they did in a conference that has many good runners, teams and coaches, I’m very proud.” Reese rested last week while her teammates ran at Medina, and the entire team will be off from racing this coming week. The senior who is headed to Michigan State next year, said she approached Saturday’s race with a somewhat lowkey mentality. “We just wanted to use it as training,” she said. “Now that we don’t have districts, I wanted to get after it. I feel like in the past, it’s been more conservative with districts the following week. But honestly, I just wanted to use this as a racing opportunity and work on my own mental fitness. I had time goals and stuff, but at the end of the day, it’s just going based off effort and what I felt like I could do.” The Eagles led right from the start, sitting 1-2-3-4-6 halfway through the race. Following Reese to the finish line were Ava Melott (3rd in 19:56.57), Jessica Pendleton (4th in 19:57.73), Olivia Pajak (5th in 20:01.06), Julianna Stein (8th in 20:19.51), Molly Suter (9th in 20:28.73) and Molly Pomfrey (15th in 21:21.61). This is the first year that Division I teams have bypassed the district meet, so Carroll and his staff have had to change their training regimen. “We’re going to train through this week, with our goals being on November,” said Carroll. “We’re going to get after it for one more week and enjoy that weekend off. We’ll watch the boys on Saturday and some other races, but it will just be a training week as well as recovering from this race. Just having that weekend off, it’s kind of nice to kind of recalibrate and refocus.”