Meet Cancellation Leads to Wet Race in Glasgow

After Malta cancelled their regular invitationals the day before the scheduled meet for Sept. 7, Glasgow High School decided to host an emergency meet at Sullivan Park for that same morning inviting runners from across the Hi-Line to join in. But come Saturday morning, that attempt would be foiled by persistent rains that had saturated the low-lying trails, and the meet would be moved to the high ground near Glasgow High School.

It was there, on the gravel portions of Airport Rd., that the Hi-Line's harriers battled it out drenched in rain and sweat. Despite the meet's last minute planning, the times logged will count as official times to qualify runners for State – a bar Scottie Coach Rod Karst described as "pretty low" pointing out that boys must run the three-mile course in 30 minutes or less and the girls in 35 minutes or less to qualify. Despite that easy bar, teams are only able to take seven runners each to the actual state meet.

According to Karst, Malta had decided to cancel their meet due to concerns about the rain and runners affecting the golf course where the meet would have occurred. He said he had offered for Malta to move the meet to the course at Sullivan Park in Glasgow, but they refused citing logistical concerns. So Karst turned to his team's seniors for council on what to do next.

"So I asked the seniors if they wanted to run," said Karst. "And they said yes. They didn't want to take a weekend off." Karst then invited a number of teams to compete and in the end a total of eight schools across the Hi-Line attended from Whitewater to Plentywood and Hays-Lodgepole to Culbertson.

The Scotties carried two of the top three runners in both the boys and girls competition. On the ladies' side, Iris McKean claimed the top spot with a time of 20:28.4 and Ali Cunningham claimed the number three position with a time of 22:10.8 finishing behind Plentywood's Annie Kaul. For the men Wilson Overby took second finishing roughly six seconds behind Wolf Point's Zander Ackerman with a time of 17:32.9. Glasgow's Carl Zabrocki claimed the third place finish with a time of 19:20.4.

In a comment to the Courier, Cunningham described the meet in the following terms: "I thought it went pretty good. It was definitely different from having a meet change like that, but it was good." She was also excited about her third-place finish which she said she was "pretty proud of" and she looks forward to the coming season. "I'm excited to see what our team can do in the coming weeks."

Zabrocki shared Cunningham's view of the meet and the team's performance. He described the meet as a good opportunity to gauge the team's performance and see where they were for the season.

"I think we are doing well," he said. "The freshmen really stepped it up this year; they're covering a lot of spots we lost."

The runners will compete next in Glendive on Friday, Sept. 13. This meet was originally scheduled for Sept. 12 however was moved due to rain in the forecast. Both the high school and middle school will attend.