Republic will send five runners – four girls and one boy – to the Class 5 state cross country meet Friday in Columbia. Ethan Haynes will represent the boys team. Miha Nambara, Gracie Troester, Misora Nambara, and Kristin Probst will compete in the girls race.
The Republic teams competed on a muddy course at the Class 5 District 2 meet at Bolivar Municipal Golf Course. The wet conditions slowed times for the whole field, but Republic still managed to put together a school-record performance.
It says something about the expectations of the Republic runners that instead of celebrating their five state qualifiers, members of the team were consoling each other after a rare tie-breaking process broke against the girls team.
Republic, Nixa, and Lee’s Summit West each finished in a tie for third place in the girls race with 120 points (compiled by adding the ranks of the top five runners for each team). Because only four teams qualify for the state meet, teams were re-ranked to include the top six runners instead of only the top five, and that re-ranking left Republic on the outside looking in.
In effect, with results so close, any of the three teams could have moved up or down based on a few steps over the 3.1-mile course. The average time of Republic’s top-five runners was slightly faster than Nixa’s average time, and about two seconds slower than Lee’s Summit West.
“It came down to three girls that all ran exactly the same time, and it was a nose-to-nose finish,” said coach Christie Bishop. “Otherwise, we never would have been tied.”
Bishop said her team’s disappointment at failing to qualify as a group was a sign of the relationships they’ve built this season.
“They go and do stuff outside of school. They spend the night with each other. They all hang out as friends, not just during cross country,” she said. “So they really bonded and they are very disappointed that their other teammates are not going to get to go with them.”
The boys race was a testament to the patience of Ethan Haynes, who has been chasing a state opportunity since falling one place short of advancing out of districts as a sophomore. He said he put in hundreds of miles in training over this summer to prepare for his senior season, and stayed patient when he found himself back in the pack Saturday.
“A lot of people hear it’s the district race and they go out way too fast,” Haynes said. “I heard that I was 40-45 back and I stayed calm… There were people in front of me that I knew were slower than me, and I stayed patient. Eventually they got closer to me and I passed them… I knew it was a three-mile race, so there’s plenty of time to make my move.”
Haynes knew he’d cracked the top 30 from hearing other teams’ coaches call out to their own runners along the route.
“I turned the corner and I saw the MSHSAA banner, and I saw that all my miles of the summer have led me to those 50 meters there, so I let out everything I had,” he said.
