Posted by Matt Wenzel, Manistee News Advocate
CUSTER — Heading into Wednesday’s West Michigan D League
jamboree at Mason County Eastern, Bear Lake coach Tony Shrum
was planning on having his runners go out hard the first two
miles.
Then prior to the race, he told the Lakers he had bad news and good news, and they opted to hear the bad first. Shrum said they were scrapping the plan.
“They said, ‘What? That sounds like good news,’” Shrum recalled. “With the heat and the course, we decided to hold off and we’ll save that for another day. The kids were happy. They weren’t really looking forward to it.”
Although the Lakers didn’t sprint out at the start, it didn’t matter as far as the results were concerned.
As usual, the Lakers dominated the jamboree as both the boys and girls took first. The Bear Lake girls were two points off a perfect score with 17, while MCE finished second with 82.
Keena Gilbert won her second jamboree with a time of 20:45.
“I think I did pretty good, I guess,” Gilbert said, admitting she was actually looking forward to the original race plan. “I kind of wanted to do it, but it was so hot it was probably best that we didn’t.”
