The Nome cross country team competed at the Region 1 North cross country meet in Noorvik on Saturday, with the Nome boys and Barrow girls qualifying for the State 1A2A3A meet.
In all, 80 runners for the boys and 57 runners for the girls represented schools from throughout the Bering Strait, Norton Sound, Northwest Arctic Borough, and North Slope regions.
For the boys, large teams—composed of five runners or more—were led by the Nome-Beltz Nanooks, winning with 42 points. Second place went to the Barrow Whalers, with third going to the Kotzebue Huskies.
Small teams in the boys saw the Kiana Lynx lead with 13 points, followed by teams from Teller and Buckland.
The Barrow girls led the Lady Nanooks into first, with the Kotzebue girls taking third, in the girls’ large-team races.
For the girls’ small team races, the Selawik Wolves eked out a narrow win over the Buckland team by one point (14 points to Buckland’s 15), with the Kiana Lynx taking third.
The top ten individual runners in each race qualified for the state meet.
For the girls, that includes Barrow runners Alaina Wolgemuth—who led with a time of 20 minutes and 49 seconds—followed by Melissa Nicely, also of Barrow. Nome’s Christine Buffas took third. For the boys, Barrow’s Pavel Hernandez took first with a time of 17 minutes and 41 seconds, followed by his team mate Kevin Goodwin. Nome’s Wilson Hoogendorn took third.
The state meet is set to take place this Saturday, Oct. 4, at Bartlett High School in Anchorage.
