By Jason Wesseldyk
Sports Editor
HICKORY CORNERS—The odds of the Saugatuck boys cross country team winning the SAC Championship on Thursday, Oct. 13, didn’t appear to be particularly good.
For starters, the Trailblazers’ No. 2 runner throughout much of the season—junior Russell VandePoel—was unable to be there for the meet because he was playing with the Saugatuck boys soccer team in a district game. On top of that, senior Luke Gorgas had been home sick until the day of the meet and freshman Sammy Gamboa was coming off a minor injury that had kept him out of the previous race.
Add it all up, and Saugatuck coach Rick Bauer had some serious concerns.
“I was worried,” Bauer said. “Kalamazoo Christian won the first league jamboree of the season and we won the second. But we had Russell for that (second league meet) and we had finished behind Kalamazoo Christian at the Portage Invitational five days earlier.
“So, I honestly didn’t really know what to expect.”
As it turned out, he should have expected a SAC championship, because that’s exactly what his team delivered by a slim 92-96 margin over Kalamazoo Christian.
Allegan placed 14th with 330 points, while Fennville and Martin were unable to post a team score because each had fewer than five runners.
“My team went out there and showed a lot of guts,” Bauer said. “And Luke is the perfect example of that. He had been sick all week and I didn’t even know if I was going to have him race. But he asked if he could go out and take it easy, so I agreed.
“I think he went out there and ran with no pressure. He was running and easy and I think that really helped his performance.”
Gorgas paced Saugatuck with an eighth-place showing of 17:56, which marked the second straight race he came in under 18 minutes.
Fellow senior Charlie Stormer checked in at 13th with a time of 18:06. The freshman duo of Brennan Nor (24th at 18:37) and Gamboa (28th at 18:54) joined junior Loch Rigozzi (29th at 19:01) in occupying the other scoring slots for the Trailblazers.
Sophomore Justin Oetman (41st at 19:33) and junior Ben Schoonmaker (99th at 24:39) also represented Saugatuck in the varsity race.
“Each guy went out there and did what he had to do for us to be successful on that day and win the SAC championship,” Bauer said. “When you win a meet with this many teams by four points, it comes down to a lot of little things. And our guys did enough of those little things for us to come out on top.”
Bauer hopes the confidence gained from winning the league title will carry over to his team’s Division 3 regional meet in Bangor on Saturday, Oct. 29. Kalamazoo Christian is in the same regional, as is a Buchanan team that also finished ahead of the Trailblazers at the Portage Invitational.
“Regionals has been our big goal all season,” Bauer said. “Yeah, winning the SAC was a goal and it feels really good to accomplish that. But we really want to win a regional title and qualify for the State Finals.”
Mason Gardea led Fennville with a 20th-place finish of 18:27, while Alex Morin (54th at 20:07) had the best finish for Martin and Nicholas Cabrera (66th at 20:47) was the first Allegan runner to cross the finish line.
In the girls race, Saugatuck placed 11th with 252 points. Fennville was sixth at 163, while Allegan and Martin didn’t qualify for the team standings.
Maya Veldt placed 37th for Saugatuck at 23:14. Nidia Martinez led Fennville (ninth at 21:31), Jozaphine Navarro led Allegan (20th at 22:12) and Samantha Stone led Martin (70th at 27:11).