Fernley girls place third at Regional Cross County meet

Robert Perea, The Fernley Reporter

In any normal season, the Fernley High School girls cross country team would be heading to the State Meet.

The Vaqueros’ girls team finished third in Saturday’s Northern 3A Region Championship meet at Shadow Mountain Park in Sparks, while the boys team placed fifth.

Ordinarily, the top four teams in the meet, and the top five individuals from nonqualifying teams would have qualified for the State Meet. However, due to the shortened season this year, no state championships are being contested.

Fernley’s girls team finished third overall with 85 points, behind region champion Spring Creek, which had 28 points, and Truckee, which scored 36. Team points are scored by adding the individual places of each team’s top five runners, after subtracting the runners from teams who didn’t field full teams.

The boys team finished fifth overall with 119 points. Spring Creek won the region championship with 44 points, followed by Elko with 75, Truckee with 97 and North Valleys with 111.

Coach Todd Wright said the team was hoping to qualify both teams for State by finishing among the top four teams.

“We were too ambitious on the first half of the race, which led us to a poor final half of the race,” Wright said.

Individually, Wright said Evan Richardson ran well.

He also said the girls ran a little more conservative on the first half of the course, which allowed them to finish strong.

“The seven girls that competed at Regionals were all freshmen and sophomores, and for all of them this was their first season of high school cross country,” Wright said. “If they keep up the hard work, they could be a force to be reckoned with.”

Four Fernley girls placed in the top 20 scorers, out of 56 runners who finished the race.

Trinity Garcia-Anders was the top finisher for Fernley placing 14th overall and the 12th scoring runner, with a time of 23:59. Right behind her was Myla Bott, who was 15th overall and the 13th scoring runner with a time of 24:08.

Amaya Nichols finished 24th overall and 19th among scoring runners with a final time of 25:48, Laila Kinnick was 26th overall and the 20th scorer with a time of 25:55 and Brooke Gonzalez Renteria was Fernley’s fifth scorer in 27th place overall and 21st among scorers with a time of 25:59.

Lilly Bacock finished in 29th place overall with a time of 26:07 and Kori Scott finished 41st with a time of 29:13.

Rylan Roth was the top placer for Fernley, in 20th place overall and 19th among scorers with a time of 20:09He

He was followed by Dustin Boutell, who placed 23rd overall and 22nd among scorers with a time of 20:19, while Morgan Zolyniak finished 24th overall and 23rd among scorers with a time of 20:30. Ricky Starr finished 28th overall and 27th among scorers with a time of 21:12, and Connie Hunter was the team’s fifth scorer in 30th place overall and 28th among scorers with a time of 21:30.

Evan Richardson, 34th place overall with a time of 22:04, and Robert Blackorby, 51st in 24:24, rounded out the lineup for Fernley.