For the first time in Wenatchee High School history, both the boys and girls cross country teams are going to State after both teams placed second in the District meet on Oct. 31 in Yakima.

For the girls team, the main goal was to beat Eastmont to the second-place spot, which would guarantee the team qualified for State. The team had high hopes, despite previous losses to Eastmont’s team, especially because they had beaten Eastmont on the three-mile course earlier in the season. “At one point, I thought we didn’t do it [beat Eastmont]. We were all scared and panicking,” said senior Ashley Murie, who came in 15th place overall. “Everyone was a part of it. If one of the runners hadn’t been where they were, we wouldn’t be going to State.”

The team narrowly beat Eastmont to second place by one point. Raquel Thody, the team’s top runner, took seventh place overall. Right behind her in eighth place was sophomore Sophie Marshall. In 11th place was junior Lindsey Wapato, followed by senior Brittany McCrum in twelfth place.

Although the boys team was prepared to go to State as a team before the meet, the team was also hoping to win the District title, but fell just 10 points short of beating their long-time rivals, Eisenhower, for first place and the title. Junior Cole Christman took second place as the team’s top runner, just 11 seconds behind first place. Senior Sam Martin came in third, followed by junior Austen Lane in fifth place.

“This is kind of a big step for us,” said junior Justin Pringle, who took 12th place overall. “We’re going to keep doing what we’re doing and treat it [State] as a normal meet, but not a life or death situation… We’ll run our hearts out and see what happens.”

“We have a lot of talent on the team,” said Coach Susan Valdez. “We’ve never taken both teams at the same time, so we really have no clue as to how it’s going to go.”

The team held the second District meet here in Wenatchee on Oct. 22, where the girls team received third place overall behind Eisenhower and Eastmont and the boys team placed second behind Eisenhower. Wapato led the girls team at seventh place overall, while Christman took second place overall to lead the boys team. The girls team also placed 15th overall and the boys ninth overall at the Richland Invitational on Oct. 12 in Richland.