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From 2022 DyeStat recap:


Riggs Pulls Away Early And Wins By 14 Seconds In 16:40.9

By Doug Binder, DyeStat Editor


PORTLAND -- Irene Riggs set out into the cold, windy conditions at Glendoveer Golf Course, settled into her pace and pushed through to a victory Saturday at the return of Nike Cross Nationals.

Riggs, of Morgantown High in West Virginia, won the first NXN race since the pandemic in 16:40.9 and was nearly 14 seconds ahead of runner-up Brooke Wilson at the finish.

Kinetic, with four members back from the 2019 national championship team, split 23 seconds on its scoring five, placing between 30th and 59th overall, and won the program's third Nike Cross Nationals title with 81 points.

Emily Bush, McKinley Wheeler and Sheridan Wheeler and Anya Belisle admitted to a feeling of deja vu standing on the podium and hoisting the Nike Cross Nationals trophy again after a three-year wait to due COVID-19-related cancellations in 2020 and 2021.

"It's so rewarding to be back here," Bush said. "We've been working so hard these past couple of years without a race to, kind of, show it. We finally got a chance to prove ourselves and I'm just super excited, so happy, so proud of this team."

Coaches Art Kranick and Linda Kranick have maintained a high school running dynasty at Saratoga Springs in New York since the mid-1980s. Prior to winning the inaugural Nike Team Nationals in 2004, Saratoga Springs earned nine unofficial national No. 1 rankings by Harrier magazine.

"They train together, have common goals, so it wasn't difficult to keep them together," Linda Kranick said.

Between the two championships, however, the group grew up in the age of the pandemic and endured like everyone else. During the broken 2020 season, Saratoga Springs participated in a meet where vying teams competed separately, one at a time, with the results merged together at the end.

Through it all, and with a few opportunities to run relays on national stages during the track season, the group kept faith that NXN would come back around once again. At every step, Saratoga Springs crushed the competition at the New York state meet, the Federation championships and NXR New York.

But Saturday's race was its first against a national caliber field in a long time.

"The meets we've been in so far, they didn't have a lot of runners around them, so this race was very different," Kranick said. "We wanted to see what they could do in a crowd and they pulled it off."

Thirteen girls in Saturday's race competed at NXN in 2019, but no team brought back more remnants of memory than Kinetic. Owing to New York's rules that allow junior high runners to compete at the varsity level, Bush made her third NXN appearance Saturday and is only a junior. The Wheeler twins ran in their fourth NXNs.

Coloradoans Brooke Wilson and Bethany Michalak finished second and third, respectively, behind Riggs. Wilson, the Colorado 5A state meet course record-breaker, took second in 16:54.6 and Michalak, of Academy, scored the first team point and was third overall. Abbey Nechanicky of Wayzata MN, who ran with Wilson and Michalak for much of the race, was fourth (16:59.2).

Niwot of Colorado finished second with 109 points and Clovis (Buchanan CA) was third with 116 points. Lone Peak of Utah was fourth with 120 points.

Riggs revealed that she missed three weeks early in the season after her right foot was mashed under the tire of a car. The accident occured after practice, when the mother of a friend mistakenly rolled the car over Riggs' foot. It caused her to go to the hospital and left a "golf-ball size" lump on her foot, but thankfully there were no broken bones or other severe damage.

"All's well that ends well," Riggs said after Saturday's win.

Riggs was in a boot for three weeks and cross-trained until her foot was healed enough to run.

Building upon her 16:02 course-record performance at NXR Southeast at WakeMed Soccer Complex in Cary, N.C., Riggs came into the race as a heavy favorite.

Nothing, not even the the icy 30-mile per hour winds whipping out of the Columbia Gorge, kept her from running her race -- out in front.

"I wanted to take this race like I've been taking it all season, and just go out hard and stick with it the best I can," Riggs said. "That was my mindset, just run my race and focus on myself."

Riggs' time was just a little over three seconds off Katelyn Tuohy's course record of 16:37.8 at the 2018 race.


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