SALT LAKE CITY -- The Ogden High School boys and girls cross country teams had a little bit of sour and a whole lot of sweet at Wednesday morning's state 3-A championships.
The sweet came with Jamie Stokes' dominating win in the 3-A girls race, followed by Sarah Feeny's second year in a row runner-up finish in the 3-mile race, topped off when the Tigers raced to a 7-point win over Park City in the 3-A boys race to claim the state championship.
From the beginning of the season, the Ogden boys knew they could surprise a few teams and focused on one goal: the state championship.
Their goal was realized behind the top-10 performances of Jordon Cross (16:01) in second and Mike Buckley (16:14) in fourth. Dayton Wright (16:49) was 23rd, Carson Garner (16:56) ran 26th and Pedro DeLeon (16:58) finished 27th to round out the scorers for the Tigers. "We knew we could do it," said Cross. "But I can't believe we did it."
Cross and first-place runner, Park City's Ben Saarel, were together for most of the race but with half a mile to go Saarel pushed ahead to win in 15:50. But it wasn't enough for Park City.
"They wanted it really bad," said Ogden coach Don Hall of his team. "They've been threatening to Gatorade me all month."
The hero of the hour for Ogden was Buckley, who Hall said knew he needed to be in at least 10th, but pushed until he was in fourth.
"We started training for this in January. We wanted to win this bad," said Buckley. "Ever since state last year we knew we had some talented kids coming up and we wanted it."
Defending state champion Bear River placed fourth overall, led by top-20 performances from Tanner Anderson (16:24) in 10th, and Brackon Rawlinson (16:33.4) in 13th, and Spencer Stamps (16:37) in 15th. Ben Lomond's Sterling Brandley ran 16thth overall in 16:41.
For Stokes, despite a letdown in the team chase, her individual championship was the realization of a long-held goal.
"I'm just really happy that things finally came together," said Stokes of her first cross country state title. "Going into the race I knew that at the end I would be either really really happy or upset and disappointed, so I thought about that and kept saying to myself, 'Don't back off. Don't let your own self down.' "
Stokes was in a pack with Feeny and a few other girls until just past the first hill, about a mile into the course.
"I wanted to conserve more going up that big hill, but once I was done there I didn't want to leave the race up to chance," she said.
From there Stokes opened up her lead and used her nerves to stay ahead, winning the race in 18:18, 23 seconds ahead of Feeny.
"This has been a goal of mine for a long time," said Stokes. "I couldn't believe I actually won it."
With Stokes and Feeny leading the pack, nationally-ranked Ogden had hoped that they would be able to win the championship, despite missing top runner Avery Calton, who was out with a hip injury.
"We have been working for this the whole season," said Feeny. "So we're really disappointed."
In the team scores, Ogden was upset by both Park City and Pine View, who scored 56, and 61 points to Ogden's 72.
"We knew the stars would have had to align for us to beat Ogden," said Park City coach Jeff Wyament. "They are a fantastic team."
"We knew it would be tough without Avery," Hall said. "But you have to give credit to Park City. They ran a great race. And this is part of the game."
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