Elijah Greer's Record Eclipsed

Elijah Greer has run for the University of Oregon for the past few years and in that time has become one of America’s premier 800 Meter runners.   Prior  to the he was not only a noted track star for Lake Oswego but a formidable cross country runners, as evidenced by his Three River League  crown, which qualified him for the State meet.    Elijah was strong enough as a harrier, that he made an attempt to qualify for America’s premier prep meet for cross country:  Foot Locker.   As one might  expect Greer was a very impressive runner, while he was in middle school & indeed he won the Portland area’s “District” title as an eighth grade student in 2004.  His time of 11:16.08 established a record, which until this fall had not even been approached.

      It naturally came as quite a surprise, when Mark Webber, an assistant cross country coach at Canby, stated that he believed the record could fall.  On Thursday Mark proved to be correct but the amazing thing was that the mark was obliterated.   Athey Creek runner Colin Squires ran a startling time of 10:39.94 on the challenging course at Molalla River State Park in Canby.  

     As impressive as Colin’s time was, it is almost mind-boggling that six others went under Greer’s former standard.   Justin Miller of Waluga was also well under the old mark with his clocking of 10:49.   Not far behind Miller were Grayson Ollar of Rosemont Ridge and Noah Belcik of Waluga, who ran 10:54 & 10:55 respectively.  Ben Sebastian of Canby placed fifth in 11:07 a time that normally would have easily won the event.   Rosemont Ridge  also had two other runners top Greer:   Roman Ollar (11:10) & Colton Hefty (11:14) and Canby ‘s Steven Cranston ran 11:25 to place 8th ahead of Pierce Miller & Kohl Nicoll who rounded out the top ten.

   Dominic Arce of EWS ran a fine 7:06.64 to break the 7th record of Taylor Hybl of Centennial, who ran 7:08.42 in 2007.  Just missing Hybl ’s mark was Alex Harbert of Waluga, who came in second with a time of 7:09.40.   Carson Cohn finished in third in 7:39.   Jamie Lopez of Wood won the boys’ 6th grade race with a time of 7:43 and Ben Walker of Athey Creek earned second in 7:51

    Jaroch Maricela of Wood topped the 8th grade girls with her time of 12:22, which was only six seconds off of the mark set by Erin McLaughlin of Rowe in 2005.Lake Oswego Junior High girls swept  the next five places with Emily leach leading the way in  12:57.  Emily was the only other girl to break thirteen minutes in the 3K event.     Lauren Gilbert of Lake Oswego claimed the prize in the 7th grade girls’ race with 7:4, while Claire Clapp of EWS took second in 8:10.  Rosemont Ridge runner Emmalyn Leonard took third with 8:13.  The division record in that 2K race of Paige Rice of 7:08 may well stand for longer than Elijah’s.   Brooklyn Stenstrom of Wood came home first in the 6th grade race, which was a 2K.   Her time of 8:29 gave her an eight second margin over Lauren Griffith of Rosemont Ridge.   Abby Gross of RR followed in 8:43 to take third.