{"id":36060,"date":"2018-09-28T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2018-09-28T17:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/?p=36060"},"modified":"2018-09-28T09:00:00","modified_gmt":"2018-09-28T17:00:00","slug":"jdhs-heads-to-state-meet-with-high-hopes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/sports\/jdhs-heads-to-state-meet-with-high-hopes\/","title":{"rendered":"JDHS heads to state meet with high hopes"},"content":{"rendered":"

The state cross country meet is Saturday at Bartlett High School in Anchorage and the Region V champion Juneau-Douglas High School is ready.<\/p>\n

The Division I girls race is at 12:45 p.m. and will pit JDHS against fellow region winners Palmer (Region III), Chugiak (Region IV) and West Valley (Region VI) as well as six other teams. The Division I boys race will follow at 2:15 p.m. and include region champions Palmer (Region III), Service (Region IV), JDHS (Region V) and West Valley (Region VI).<\/p>\n

Junior Sadie Tuckwood will look to take back her state <\/a>crown<\/a> from West Valley’s Kendall Kramer. The two runners shared the same course three weeks ago at the Palmer <\/a>Invitational<\/a>, and both finished the 5-kilometer course in under 18:30, a feat two other runners in Alaska (Eagle River’s Emily Walsh and South Anchorage’s Ava Earl) have done this season.<\/p>\n

“I’ve never seen so many girls running so fast and it’s pretty special to see,” JDHS co-coach Merry Ellefson said. “Even if we reflect back to the state 3200 (meter run at the state track meet) this spring. Kendall and Sadie were neck-and-neck. Kendall won, but they both popped into the top-10 ever finishes in the 3200.”<\/p>\n

This is the quickest team Tuckwood’s been a part of over the last two seasons. Juniors Anna Iverson and Katie McKenna and freshmen Annika Schwartz and Trinity Jackson are all capable of running under 20:30.<\/p>\n

The boys team is also a more competitive group this season. Arne Ellefson-Carnes<\/a> is having his strongest season and so are Finn Morley, Clem Taylor-Roth, Ronan Davies and Ambrose Bucy. The latter four runners have set personal records this season in the neighborhood of 17:30, which Ellefson said puts them in the mix with the majority of the others runners in the meet.<\/p>\n

“It’s really about getting those groups to work together with confidence that they’ve garnered from other choices that they’ve made throughout the year,” Ellefson said. “And we’re in a good place in terms of everyone being healthy.”<\/p>\n

JDHS’ Koby Goldstein, Dalton Hoy, Jasmin Holst and McKenna McNutt will also be in the meet. Thunder Mountain High School’s Hannah Deer, Kiah Dihle and Tucker Kelly qualified as individuals.<\/p>\n

\n

\u2022 Contact sports reporter Nolin Ainsworth at 523-2272 or nainsworth@juneauempire.com. Follow Empire Sports on Twitter at @akempiresports.<\/b><\/p>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The state cross country meet is Saturday at Bartlett High School in Anchorage and the Region V champion Juneau-Douglas High School is ready.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":425,"featured_media":36061,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":6,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[276,222,217,321],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-36060","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports","tag-cross-country-running","tag-high-school","tag-juneau-douglas-high-school","tag-thunder-mountain-high-school"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36060","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=36060"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36060\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36061"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36060"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36060"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36060"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=36060"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}