State meet 2010

Boys move on over the girls are moving in! The All State Wall of Fame will make room for two more after todays Cross Country State Championship in Natchitoches, La. Not one but two young ladies earned the honor in the girls 2A race on the chilly afternoon in November. 8th Grader Hailey Hesterman finished 3rd in the field running a 19:24 over the 3 mile course. Her finish makes her the highest placing cavalier in history to finish at the State Cross country meet. Finishing in front of Hailey were two seniors planning to carry on their running career on the collegiate level. This is very exciting for Hailey and our program. She ran like a little champion out there today. I think if she would have had another 400meters she may have taken the whole thing!
Little did we know that The excitment for the race was not over! Cavalier long shot Ashlen Grantham squeezed her way into the All State team finishing in the final spot, 10th today with an impressive time of 20:19. We knew going into the race that Ashlen could be a dark horse for top honors if she ran well. Ashlen is one that rises to competition and runs well under pressure. When she gave me a thumbs up with 1200meters to go I knew she had it in the bag! It was almost overwhelming to see these two young ladies on the podium. These girls set new sites for our program and our school. There are so many talented young females athletes at Calvary just waiting to break out. We hope Ashlen and Hailey are the first among many female All Staters across the board at Calvary. Over 300 distance runners start the season in cross country while only about half of that make it to the title meet. Out of those only the top ten are crowned first team All State. Congrats to our new All Staters! What a record breaking honor!

Ashlen and family you will be missed greatly! Thank you for your loyalty and love during your time here. Things will not be the same with out you guys and we pray that God continues to bless you all as you move toTexas! I will ensure Ashlen gets her pretty picture on that wall!!!!

On the team side the girls finished 6th overall out of 14 while the guys finished 8th out of 23 full teams. Some of the placements below are not exact. Official results should be posted soon. Overall we were pretty pleased today. The boys ran really well on this course last time they were here and either bested or ran very close to those times from just a few weeks ago despite the muddy conditions. Considering most of our team members on the guys side and several from the girls side are first year runners who have been at it less than six months ii would say they did as well as we could hope. We are looking forward to seeing Tim Kunkel get a few more years under his belt with Jason and Josh and we will miss our seniors (John, Jared, James, Mark, and Kaila) greatly! It was frustrating seeing John get knocked out of All State honors his senior year despite running faster than he did in 09 when he earned the honor but looking at the incredible depth of competiton on the guys side (6 of the top 10 COMPOSITE Ranked runners in the 2A race alone! Plus another stellar group ranked in the top 15 compositely.. It could have been anyone's day. ) he cannot be disappointed in this. On the girls side we had some outstanding preformances and some heart breakers. Having Nicole injured these last few weeks really set us back. These are things out of our control and I am proud of several of first year runners (shelby, faith, holly) for stepping up today despite their inexperience on the State stage. I am grateful Nicole gave it a try today and I was glad to see Kelsey recover from the last time she ran the course. The state meet course never claiimed to be fast or fun but you all made it through. Congrats on a great season!

John Broughton: 17:11-12th/ NSU invite: 17:08/2009: 17:16-8th
Josh Hudson:18:06-34th/Nsu invite:18:06/2009:18:43-35th
Jason Sibert:18:31-43rd/NSU invite:18:36/2009:19:11-47th
Jared Lupo:19:01-56th/Nsu invite: No time/2009: No time/4th runner:Eric Austin:18:54-39th
Tim Kunkel:19:11-58th/Nsu invite:19:00/2009: No time/5th runner:Dakota Rothell: 19:00-42nd
James Kunkel:19:46-73rd/Nsu invite:19:57/2009: No time/6th runner: Jason Sibert:19:11=47th
Mark Blume:22:07-114/Nsu invite: No time

Hailey Hesterman: 19:29-3rd/Nsu invite:20:20
Ashlen Grantham: 20:19-10th/Nsu invite:21:19/2009: 21:14-13th
Kelsey Wildes: 22:28-41st/Nsu invite:23:22/2009:22:08-21st
Shelby Dodson: 22:30-45th/Nsu invite:25:02/2009: No time/4th runner last year:Lindsey Kosin:22:54-37th
Faith Kunkel: 24:00-60th/Nsu invite:24:32/2009: No time/5th runner last year:Avery Watson:23:12-44
Nicole Kosin: 24:07-62nd/Nsu invite:22:25/2009:22:14-22nd/6th runner last year:Kaila Wildes:24:36-74th
Holly Dempsey:25:17-75th/Nsu invite:24:48/2009: No time: 7th runner:Chandler Falcon: 25:08