Saints kick off new season with young team

Luke Lowe adding more miles to his belt. Photo by Nick Pelster

The 2015 MHCC Cross Country season kicked off Sept. 11 at the Ash Creek event held at Monmouth, Ore.

Next up for Mt. Hood: the NWAC Preview Meet, to be run on Saturday at Lewisville Park outside Battle Ground, Wash.

The men’s top finisher was Jonathan Zacarius, with a time of 21:35.4 in the 6.3k race (6,300 meters). The Saints women’s best runner was Leah Norquist, who finished her 4.6k (4,600 meters) in 20:33.5.

The Mt. Hood women finished fourth at the 2014 NWAC Championships; the men came in seventh. The Saints are looking to improve this season. The task for the women got a lot tougher after Mt. Hood freshman All-American and 2014 Baden Cross-Country female athlete of the year Georgia Glovatsky transferred to Western Colorado University this summer. Glovatsky won the NWAC Championship 5k and placed outside of the top 5k in only one race all of last year. Glovatksy will be extremely difficult to replace.

This year, the women are led by sophomore: Leah Norquist, who attended nearby Sam Barlow High School. Norquist placed 10th in the NWAC Southern Regional Championships in 2014. It was Norquist’s best race of the season. Mt. Hood head coach Jim Satterfield hopes that Norquist can carry her momentum into 2015.

The Saints men are led by Zacarius, a Benson High School product, in his second year on the team.

Satterfield hopes to see his athletes buy into the program and into cross-country, in general. “I like to win just like everybody else does. This sport is about getting better,” he said. He is also hopeful that a relatively unknown runner can really impress and do very well.

Asked for his season goals, the head coach said, “I expect to turn this group into lifetime runners who see the sport as a series of progressions.”

Under his veteran guidance, the Saints count on doing just that.

Advocate Staff