Interlake High School - 2015 Cross-Country Post-Season Highlights

Joseph's final cross-country season was a special one for Interlake High School. With three strong Senior runners, plus several rising Sophomores, they were hoping to return to the State Championship for the second straight year.

After a strong regular season, the post-season started with the KingCo competition at Lake Sammamish State Park. Interlake won the meet easily to qualify for the following week's competition.

Joseph finished fourth overall, though third on his team as Interlake dominated the top spots and won the meet

The 2015 KingCo Boys Champions

The following week was the District Championships, also at Lake Sammamish State Park. This featured the top ~10 schools from King County and Seattle. It was a rainy day and a muddy course. Once again, Interlake dominated the meet and won to qualify for the following week's State Championships! Joseph finished tenth in the District.

The start of the race

Muddy finishers

A familiar site - Interlake on the podium as the meet champions

The State Cross-Country Championship is held in Pasco every year, and Interlake returned for the second year. The team tent was festooned with posters made by their supporters encouraging each runner on. Joseph's was particularly neat!

The race itself featured about 150 of the top runners from across the state. The starting line had 24 different slots for groups of 7 runners each - both the top 16 schools and then another 8 slots for top runners from teams that didn't qualify.

And they're off!

(No photos from the actual race - too busy running to different spots to see them).

Joseph ran his best race of his career, setting his personal record of 15:57 - getting below 16 minutes was a huge accomplishment!  He actually finished second on Interlake for the first time, and finished 20th in the entire meet. Wow!

Interlake finished fourth overall, the best finish ever for an Interlake team, and an improvement from their 10th place finish last year. North Central (from Spokane) won the race handily with 75 points (lowest number wins), with the second and third place teams scoring 121 and 124. Interlake was close behind with 141. The top 4 schools are rewarded with a trophy and are called up to the podium.

Congratulations on a great season !!