Sweet 16 for Saline Hornets

Halloween. Trips to the apple orchard. Fall colors. The Saline girls cross country team celebrating a league championship.

These are just some of the telltale signs that it's October in Michigan.

Thursday at Hudson Mills Metropark, the Lady Hornets won the SEC Red Conference jamboree, placing five girls in the top six in yet another dominant performance. It was Saline's third SEC Red Jamboree victory of the season. It means the girls have won their conference for the 16th straight year.

Sophomore Elianna Shwayder took first overall, finishing the race in 18:49. Freshmen Lauren Green (2nd, 19:02) and Abby Rentschler (3rd, 19:11) were right behind her. Junior Alyssa Cummings (5th, 19:20) and senior Amy Creutz (6th, 19:31) also figured into the scoring, which was very nearly the best possible. Saline finished with 17 points. The best possible total a team can have is 15. Bedford was second with 73 points.

Also running the varsity race were sophomore Gloria Park (12th, 19:56) and Lindsay Walter (17th, 20:32).

After easily winning the first two jamborees of the season, there was no reason to expect anything less than another great performance from the Hornets, said coach Mike Smith.

"We ran like we have been running for the last month or so. We expected to do so, and we knew that if we did, we'd win pretty easily," Smith said.

Having won 15 straight conference titles, the team entered the season with high expectations and a tough standard to live up to.

"We talked a lot about that when the season began. These girls did not want to be the team that sees the string end. I think that every year, there's a little more pressure," Smith said. "But the girls deal with it well. They use it as motivation rather than as something that weighs on them. I think the girls feel a sense of responsibility to the program to continue our success, and that's a good thing."

The Hornets now look forward to the regional, held a week from Saturday at Lake Erie Metropark.

"We want to maintain what we've done here and get ourselves into the state meet, and then we will see what happens. Right now, we have as good a chance as anyone to win it," Smith said. "We neeed to stay healthy and I think we can drop a little bit of time still."

With the completion of today's event, the Hornets 130+ girl team shrinks to bout 10.

The Hornets were strong in the reserve race, taking the top five spots. Kelly Hall was first in 20:01. Amy Frauhammer, Kaileigh Keller, Maria Romero and Mara VanSickle rounded out the top five. Samantha Szuminsk (7th), Erin Fitch, (8th) and Jenny Kise (10th) also had top 10 finishes.

Kristen Green, Calley Jastrow, Kelly Richart, Danielle Rathfon, Alexis Ammon and Alexist Nowicki helped give Saline 14 of the top 18 runners in the race.