Saints run with the big Dogs, excel

Mt. Hood’s first-year cross-country runner Georgia Glovatsky continues to impress.

Glovatsky might have finished in seventh place during the Portland State Viking Classic on Saturday at Blue Lake Park, but that was great, considering she was competing against runners from five four-year universities, including Portland State University, the University of Portland and Oregon State. The Saints women finished in fifth place with 131 points, while Warner Pacific College finished right behind them, in sixth place out of the six-team pile-up.

The 26-year old Glovatsky had a PR of 17:20.27 in the 5K run, which bested her former PR (personal record) by more than a minute.

“Our whole team raced really well,” Glovatsky said. “We had super tough competition.”

The Saints were the only team representing a two-year school at the meet, which took place on a beautiful and fast course.

Head coach Jim Satterfield mocked a similar response after finding out that a handful of his women had PRs, but he swore swears the course is “legit” after it was measured twice, he said.

Satterfield had a hard task at hand when deciding on who his stand-out female student-athlete nomination would be, for all-Northwest Athletic Conference recognition.

“I had to nominate athletes of the week, and submitted to the league my whole (women’s) team,” he  said. “So many gals did well and had PRs. I’m not sure if (the NWAC) will allow it. But there (were) too many individual outstanding performances to say one person did better than another.”

Satterfield again was struck by  his phenom runner, Glovatsky, who ran  in the heat of the pack for the entire race.

“She was tucked in right with the lead, which was our plan, but she PR’ed by 75 seconds. She was able to run down two or three girls in the last lap and went from 10th or 11th to seventh. Great race!” he said.

For the second weekend in a row, freshman Michael Francy surpassed teammate Brandon Raleigh and finished with a time of 25:56.47, which was good for ninth place in the men’s 8K race, Raleigh finished behind with a time of 26:21.19 and wound up in 14th place.

“He’s (Francy) running really well,” said Raleigh, a sophomore. “He runs very smart. I got him the first couple races but he got me the last two. I need to hold off more in the begging because it’s a much longer race than I make it sometime.

“We talked about it after the race and we’re going to run together. It’s definitely nice having someone to push you, especially compared to last year,” Raleigh said.

Satterfield was happy to see freshman Jonathan Zacarius back in action after he missed the first two meets with an injury. Zacarius finished with a time of 28:00.01.