Parkway West Flexes; Baker, Hershenow Gain Confidence
Mid-week rain showers doused the course at McNair Park in St. Charles somewhat, but not enough to slow down the times on Saturday's Suburban Conference Championships. In the second year of seeing all divisions combined, the second biggest in St. Louis of the season did not disappoint. The first race of the day saw a huge victory for Kirkwood junior Christian Baker. Beating out the Lafayette duo of Nassim Oufattole and Harrison Brown in the last half mile, Baker showed off impressive wheels and strength to lock up the win in a new personal best 16:03. Baker was actually 6th a week ago at Parkway West, behind four runners he took down on Saturday. He has now ran under 16:20 three times and won at Parkway Central in a sub-17:00 on a hot afternoon.
Kirkwood may have had the first one across the line, and Lafayette may have seen the next two finishers, but Parkway West had the next four after them with their fifth coming across in 11th. It sounds like a broken record, but the Longhorns continue to show off their stellar pack running. "We really focused on our packing as good as we could," said senior and #2 man Blake Selm. Saturday's split was more impressive than any they had had before as they put five boys within 14 seconds of each other and averaged 16:26. Their 33 points were 28 clear of Kirkwood in 2nd and 30 ahead of Lafayette. All four teams will face off again at the Class 4 District 2 meet again at Big Driver
On the girls side, it was more of the same dominance from the Longhorns. Chloe Hershenow was the overall champion after finishing 14th a year ago and she led Parkway West to the 30 point victory over Kirkwood. Running in a pack of about six of the strongest runners in the area which included defending champion Mollie Rogan (Lafayette), Abigail Juedemann (Lindbergh), Lila Bensky (Ladue), Adyson Delaney (Eureka), and Hannah Santoni (Kirkwood) for the first two miles, Hershenow eventually broke away as they hit the other side of McNair. Juedemann made a move, but ran out of real estate before finishing in second in 19:26. Hershenow's 19:22 for the win avenged her loss to Juedemann a week ago at the Parkway West Invitiational. Bensky would finish third (19:33) with the Parkway West #2 Emily Dickson coming through in 4th and Santoni finishing 5th. After making a huge move at 2 miles, Fox'sAmie Martin ran another sub-20:00 for 6th in 19:54.
