Apparently nobody told Idaho sophomore Halie Raudenbush that the first cross country meet of the season is usually a low-key meet. Raudenbush dominated the competition on Saturday at the Clash of the Inland Northwest in Spokane, winning the women’s 4-kilometer race in 14 minutes, 20 seconds.
“Halie had a great freshman year for us in cross country but has made some huge improvements from last year,” Idaho coach Wayne Phipps said. “She ran 48 seconds faster this year than last year.”
Raudenbush won the race with little competition beating the second-place finisher by eight seconds. Her time is also the second fastest on the Spokane course in Idaho history.
Phipps said Raudenbush started out conservatively but pulled further and further ahead as the race went on.
Although cross country standout Hannah Kiser didn’t compete last weekend, Raudenbush’s performance still came as somewhat of a surprise as she ousted three Idaho veteran senior runners as well as the rest of her teammates to garner the win. Her victory highlights the depth of the Vandal women.
“We have a lot of depth this year,” Phipps said. “Our four seniors are really ready to go this year and our sophomores all made a huge improvement. The average improvement of that group was about 30 seconds over last year. Our new freshman coming in ran very, very well.”
The second and third place finishers for the Vandals were senior Holly Browning at ninth overall and sophomore Stephanie Rexus at 16th.
On the men’s side, newcomer Cody Helbling was the top Vandal finisher crossing the finish line at 12th overall. The junior transfer finished in 19:04.0.
Another newcomer, freshman Nicholas Boersma, was the next to finish for Idaho in 15th with a time of 19:11.0. Sophomore Santos Vargas rounded out the Idaho top-three in 18th overall.
“I was still very impressed by the men,” Phipps said. “We ran one person, essentially, that had run on that course before. I was really impressed. We’re going to have a pretty steep improvement curve with that group as they learn to get adjusted to running 8K over maybe 5K.”
The newcomers offer a much needed boost to a Vandal men’s team that is without two top runners from last year in graduated seniors Barry Britt and Jeff Osborn.
The Vandals are off this weekend as they focus on training before heading to Seattle for the Sundodger Invitational on Saturday, Sept. 14. Having a meet every other week is a common occurrence on the cross country schedule.
Not having a meet every week gives the runners a chance to put in some intense weeks of training as the goal is to peak at the WAC Championships. Idaho athletes will not race on back-to-back weeks unless they make it to the two NCAA Championship meets at the end of the season.
Stephan Wiebe can be reached at [email protected]