On Friday at noon the Bear Lake/Onekama Cross Country boarded the bus and left for the Cross Country Meet at Portage MI to take part in the Portage Invitational billed as the biggest High School Cross Country Meet in the Midwest and one of the largest in the nation with over 6,000 runners taking part in this awesome meet teams come from Michigan and nearby states to run in the Portage Inv. This year is the 10^th anniversary of this event which has a waiting list of teams that want to take part in this great event. It was run very smoothly considering the number of teams, runners. Extreme heat that was a big factor on Saturday with the temperature in the mid 80’s and the humidity very high. It is a great race to watch a cross country as has plenty of places to see the runners.

At 9:00 a.m. our Varsity girls were off and running at the sound of the gun along with 159 Div. 4 girls and our young ladies did awesome job today finishing 3^rd out of 24 teams and bringing home a 3^rd place trophy. 1^st was North Pointe Christian 79 pts, 2^nd Battle Creek St. Philips 92 pts., 3^rd Bear Lake/Onekama 170 pts., 4^th Hesperia 191 pts., 10^th Glen Lake 265 pts.

Overall order of finish for our Varsity Girls:

• 11^th Brenna Miller                     21:23 Medal  (10^th)

• 35^th Tobi Schoedel                   22:30 Medal  (29^th)

• 46^th Shelby Sidor                     22:43 Medal  (39^th)

• 50^th Katie Alkire                       22:48 Medal  (43^rd)

• 56^th Elizabeth Schoedel            23:01    (49^th)

• 58^th Taylor Hagen                    23:06   (51^st)

• 81^st Anna Veverica                    24:09   73^rd)

For the JV Girls race Kathrine Schomke finished 58^th out of 117 runners with a time of 26:32

Just the top Middle School runners made the trip with the Varsity teams to compete in the Middle School race.   They were Jaylee Brown and Cody Graf. At the Middle School Race they put Division 1, 2, 3, & 4 together and the girls ran separate from the boys in a race that was about 1 ½   miles long 

• In the Girls race there were 421 runners. Jaylee Brown was just awesome in finishing in 10^th place overall with a time of 9:51 and got a medal.

•  In the Boys race there 471 runners and Cody Graf was terrific finishing in 6^th place overall with a time of 9:00 and a medal. Cody had a new look with a very nice  Mohawk haircut.

The Varsity boys, wearing their new Mohawk haircut look finished 7^th out of a tough field of 24 teams from Div.4 with 172 runners taking part in this race.  1^st was Hesperia 67 pts., 2^nd Sauga tuck 133 pts., 3^rd Sarance 152pts., 4^th Pewamo-Westphalia 173pts., 5^th Ann Arbor Greenhills 183pts., 6^th Concord 208 pts., 7^th Bear Lake/Onekama 238pts., 10^th  Traverse City St. Francis 280 pts.

Overall order of finish of our Varsity Boys:

• 8^th Chuckie Schoedel                17:19 Medal (8^th)

• 28^th Jordan Maxey                   18:06 Medal (27^th)

• 59^th Danny Brown                     18:56 (57^th)

• 74^th Jaron Llewellyn                 19:19 (71^st)

• 78^th John Evans                        19:21 (75^th)

• 83^rd Justin Zupin                      19:27 (80^th)

• 97^th Ryan Pienta                       19:55 (94^th)

For the JV Boys they put Div. 3 & 4 together and there were 200 runners in this race and our JV overall finish is

•  44^th Lewis Bartlett                               19:52 Medal

•  86^th Weston Brooks                             21:14

• 124th Ian Smith                                    22:14

• 142^nd Braden Bowling                            23:01

• 183^rd Patrick Spalding                          25:27

• 195^th Justin Brown                               27:43

Next meet is the Conference final meet of the year on Wednesday Oct.10 at 4:15 p.m. at WSCC

Dennis Zupin, Reporting

Hair Cut Day: The Mohawk Look

More on Portage Invitational at www.portageinvite.com

Onekama Sports
for 2007-2008

Onekama High School
2007-2008

Photos by Ann, Lynn, and Nancy

Runners, if you would like to add comments, send them to beldridg@manistee.org
I'll add them to the page.

www.onekama.k12.mi.us

October 6, 2007