By David Rogers. BOONE, N.C. — Led by Watauga’s Will Bradbury, five different schools were represented in the top five finishing positions on Oct. 5 in the running of the 2022 Northwestern Conference Pre-Conference Cross Country event.
Bradbury finished the 5,000-meter course in 17:16, 36 seconds ahead of Hibriten’s Rylan Sedlacek (17:52.00). Noah Farmer (18:05) came in at No. 3, followed by Parker Bowman (18:26) of South Caldwell and Thomas Campbell (18.39) of Alexander Central in the No. 4 and No. 5 positions, respectively.
The Pioneers had eight runners finish in the top 15 and 12 of the top 20. In addition to Bradbury, they were Collin Anderson (No. 6), Jonah Norris (No. 8), Roman Sibaja (No. 9), Sam Nixon (No. 10), Elliott Taft (No. 11), Calvin Zwetsloot (No. 13), and Maxwell DePriest (No. 14).
Rounding out the Pioneers finishing in the top 20 were Sam Rex (No. 16), Wesley Coatney (No. 18), Davis Crymes (No. 19), and Silas Powell (No. 20).
Six Northwestern Conference schools were represented by 75 athletes in the Men’s Varsity division of the event.
“This event was more about familiarizing all of the schools and their athletes with the course,” explained Watauga head coach Randy MacDonough, “because the conference meet will be run on the same course in roughly two weeks. Some of the guys were racing for finishing positions and times, but a lot were just checking out the course. You had schools like Freedom, who had a competition meet just yesterday, so they were basically jogging. Our guys were using it as a training run.”
The Northwestern Conference Cross Country Championships event is scheduled for Oct. 18, at Watauga High School, beginning at 4:30 p.m.
TEAM SCORING
- Watauga 34
- Alexander Central 57
- Ashe County 81
- South Caldwell 96
- Hibriten 110
- Freedom 154
