Leave it up to a senior and four-time state competitor to offer some advice for first-timers.<\/p>\n
Thunder Mountain High School’s Erin Wallace, a senior who fought off an ankle injury to stay on the course this season, is one of four Falcons to qualify for Saturday’s ASAA\/First National Bank Alaska Cross Country Running State Championships in Anchorage.<\/p>\n
Joining Wallace at the starting line of the Division I (4A) girls race at Bartlett High School will be teammates Hannah Deer and Reece Bleakley.<\/p>\n
TMHS’ Shafer Suzuki is TMHS’ lone qualifier in the Division I (4A) boys race at 12:45 p.m.<\/p>\n
Wallace has qualified for the state meet every year of her high school career as one of the top 10 finishers at the Region V meet.<\/p>\n
“Doing this for four years in a row now that’s a pretty big accomplishment,” TMHS coach Scott May said.<\/p>\n
She ran a 19:17 for fifth place overall at last year’s state meet.<\/p>\n
Like Wallace, Suzuki is a fourth-year runner under May. Unlike Wallace, this is Suzuki’s first appearance on the statewide stage.<\/p>\n
“We knew he was on the fence coming into regions (of qualifying) and so he was very excited just to make it,” May said.<\/p>\n
May said his four state runners broke bread this week to talk about the weekend.<\/p>\n
“We all had dinner together at one of their houses, and that was Erin giving her wisdom to the other three,” May said. “It’s a very different course then were used to.”<\/p>\n
What did Wallace share with her teammates?<\/p>\n
“Just be conservative at first and then pour it on in the second half of the race,” May said.<\/p>\n
May said there’s a large hill at the beginning of the course, and runners sometimes take it too fast.<\/p>\n
Deer, a freshman, and Bleakley, a sophomore, will run alongside one of the most competitive fields of underclassmen in recent history.<\/p>\n
Freshmen Sadie Tuckwood (JDHS), Kendall Kramer (West Valley) and Maggie Druckenmiller (West Valley) all made the podium in last year’s Division I (4A) state race.<\/p>\n
At the Region IV Championships last weekend on the Bartlett trails, freshmen Ava Earl (South Anchorage) and Emily Walsh (Eagle River) finished first and second, respectively.<\/p>\n
• Contact sports reporter Nolin Ainsworth at 523-2272 or nolin.ainsworth@juneauempire.com.<\/b><\/p>\n
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Leave it up to a senior and four-time state competitor to offer some advice for first-timers. Thunder Mountain High School’s Erin Wallace, a senior who fought off an ankle injury to stay on the course this season, is one of four Falcons to qualify for Saturday’s ASAA\/First National Bank Alaska Cross Country Running State Championships […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":425,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":6,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-18518","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18518","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/425"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18518"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18518\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18518"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18518"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=18518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}