As a sophomore, Gabriel Dinnel won the Smaller School Division at the Ultimook Invitational. In fact, he ran faster than the winner of the Larger School Division. Last year he won again, this time running the second fastest time ever on the course, just 7 seconds from the course record owned by the fine runner that won the race Gabriel's freshman year when he was 3rd. So breaking the record was the only thing left to shoot for. Normally he would take the lead after the mud pit at 1 mile. This year he had a commanding lead going into the pit such that the crowd mistakenly thought his pace was unsustainable. Gabriel not only broke the record, he smashed it by 26 seconds! The only thing that went wrong for Gabriel was the mispronouncing of his name at the awards.
Tuesday was not a good day at workout for Paige Maas. She was not capable of completing the workout as planned. Thursday went much better because she made appropriate adjustments as she prepared for the quality workout day. As our girls knew they were going to be short handed in the Ultimook Invitational on Saturday (missing four of our top eight runners), her teammates had to turn to Paige to help the Panthers earn a team trophy in this her first high school race. Fortunately, they turned to the "right Paige" (based on Thursday's workout) rather than the "wrong Paige" (based on Tuesday's workout). She beat exactly 100 girls, placing 26th of 126. This was enough to help the Panthers place 4th of 13 complete teams (there were several other incomplete teams as well).