Cougars end season at regionals

The Cougar Cross Country teams knew they were a long shot to qualify for the state championship Saturday but there was a glimpse of hope, especially for the ladies. The girls race started fast and was led by Westfield's Nichole Jones and a solid group from Kingwood. Everything unfolded pretty much as everyone expected. Jones was the winner followed by a mass of Kingwood runners.

Kempner had a very good outing with six out of seven runners setting a new personal record for 3200 meters. Sophomore Elizabeth Westlake led the team with a very good 12:06. She was followed by junior Amy Machemehl in 12:31. V-Rod ran 13:00. Tommi Higgins and Nicole Schinderle both had really good races running 13:26 and 13:27 respectively. Nikki Gifford and Elena O'Bryan also ran personal bests of 14:11 and 14:27 respectivlely. The girls showed continuing improvement throughout the season and it culminated with breakthrough performances at regionals. The girls' team is very young and very talented and will be successful for years to come.

On the boys side, the team faced some unfortunate occurences. The team's number four runner Bernardo Palomera injured his hip at district, the team's number six runner Jay Gary sprained his ankle in basketball practice, and the number seven runner had a family emergency and all were unable to compete. Allen Livingston, who was also nursing a swolen ankle had to be moved up from JV to field a five man squad. The team's alternate freshman Shalin Dalal seperated his hand in basketball practice and was unable to compete because he was on medication that prevented physical activity. Despite all of the adversity the boys still came to run. Eric Sheppard stepped back into his role of number one man after coming in behind Chris Pine the last two meets. Pine followed only seven seconds behind Sheppard with a personal best of 17:27. Evan Wilson, who had a goal of 18:30, ran 18:30 for a new PR. Kenneth Clark also PRed with an 18:32. Sophomore Allen Livingston ran fifth man with a PR of 19:19. The team did the best they could possibly do under these circumstances but came up well short of a state meet bid.

Overall, the season was a successful one and the team is only losing five runners to graduation. Veronica Rodriguez, Eric Sheppard and Chris Pine will be greatly missed and are irreplaceable. We can only hope the younger runners will be able to step it up as much as Chris, Eric and V-Rod did.