Carson girls finish third at Grass Valley

A close-knit pack of runners paced the Carson High girls to a solid third-place finish at the Nevada Union Invitational in Grass Valley, Calif., on Saturday.

Christy Works, Gloria Sosa, Kristin Dockery and Jenny Mital all cracked the top 30 and finished 67 seconds apart to help the Senators finish third in a 16-team field. Reno scored 53 points to run away with the large schools team title, while Roseville, Calif., edged Carson by a 101-106 margin for the runner-up spot. Galena was fourth with 117 points.

Works finished 13th with a time of 20 minutes, 42 seconds over the hilly 3-mile course, one spot ahead of Sosa in 14th with a time of 20:47. Dockery wasn't far back with a 20th-place run of 21:18, Mital ran 21:49 for 28th and Yvette Hollett ran 22:21 to finish 36th and round out the team scoring. Meagan Meyer (22:37) and Hannah Riedl (23:33) also ran for the Senators.

Sosa and Mital ran their best races of the season to date, according to coach Pete Sinnott.

"Jenny has really started to come on," Sinnott said. "She's been working hard at every practice and competing very well. It's showing, too, because she's improved like three minutes from last year."

Reno's Marie Lawrence won the race with a 17:51 clocking.

"Reno is still the power, but we had a good pack of runners right behind them," said Sinnott, whose five scoring runners logged average times of 21:23 in the race.

"I was really happy with the kids," he added. "They all competed well in a very good meet. It was a perfect day to run, the course was great, we couldn't have asked for more."

Carson's boys were led by the freshman tandem of Richard Shroy and Nick Schlager, who finished 19th and 35th with respective times of 17:20 and 18:04. Caleb Carter finished 18:11, while Ethan Graber ran 18:32, Andrew Stevenson 19:00, Zach Mapes 19:17 and Tyler Davies 19:50 for the Senators.

Even though the Senators were without No. 1 runner Chad Shroy, who missed the race to take his ACT test, they still finished eighth in a solid 18-team large schools field. Reno easily won the title with 39 points, while Woodcreek (Roseville) took second with 108 points and Galena third with 122. Carson was eighth with 233.

Brad Doerring of Yuba City, Calif., won the race in a course record time of 15:54.

Carson had four runners crack the top 20 to finish third in the JV boys division with 82 points, only six points behind runner-up Woodcreek. Galena won the team title with 50.

Mark Neddenriep ran 19:16 to finish sixth for Carson, Jared Mondragon was 13th in 19:40, Scott Wandel 14th in 19:43 and Greg Saunders 20th in 20:04. Andrew Richards finished 38th in 21:11.

Haleigh Ward finished third in the JV girls race with a time of 23:06 and Libby Rheault was fifth in 23:47. Kelli Brothers finished 12th in 24:37 and Kirsti Walker finished the race in 31:48 for Carson.

The Senators host Reno and South Tahoe for a three-way Sierra League meet Wednesday at 3 p.m. at Washoe Lake State Park.