Grizzlies continue to build team with improvement

Having just hosted their own invitational on Monday, the Rocky Mountain Grizzlies traveled to Cody Thursday for the Cody Fox and Hounds Invitational.

Seven of the team’s 10 participating runners ran season-best times at the meet, during which, in the fox and hound format, slower runners start first, with increasingly faster runners (based on season times) starting in stages after that.

“Cody is a fast course, and almost all of our runners improved their times,” coach Tim Jones said. “It also is a bit of a different race. The slower runners start first, and the faster runners start last. There is a lot of chaos in the middle because the faster runners catch up with the pack and have to fight their way through them. It would be interesting to know whether it helps their times because they have someone to chase or hurts their times because they lose speed and rhythm trying to get past other runners on turns and such.

“Either way, the goal for our team each week is to work hard in practice and improve from week to week with our times. So far so good.”

The top runner for the Rocky boys was junior Hudson May, who ran under 20 minutes for the second straight meet, completing the course in 19:38, just off his time at Foster Gulch three days earlier.

Junior Cole Minchow ran a personal-record time of 20:54, 50 seconds faster than his run at the Rocky Mountain meet, and freshman Dalan Wambeke ran 21:49, chopping 1:36 off his previous best three days earlier.

Continuing to show improvement was junior Alex Hedges, who ran a time of 22:48, 1:42 better than his time at the home meet.

Senior Noah Bisby ran 23:42, senior Noah Johnson 24:47, 1:27 faster than his time at Foster Gulch.

In the girls race, senior Gwynff Bodtke ran her best time of the season, completing the course in 27:23, 39 seconds faster than her time at the Billings meet and 30 seconds faster than her time at the Cody meet a year ago.

Sophomore Evynn Alvarez ran the race in 28:57, which is 38 seconds faster than her time in Billings, and senior Ashley Pizana ran 32:02 in her second cross country race, improving by 1:43 over her time three days earlier at Foster Gulch. Sophomore Ellie Alvarez ran 32:09.

Worland today

The Grizzlies will next run at the Worland Invitational today (Thursday) at the Worland golf course. Running begins with the middle school girls race at 3 p.m., followed by the middle school boys at 3:30, high school girls at 4 and high school boys at 4:30.

The Powell Invitational will wrap up the regular season on Friday, Oct. 6.