Nome Cross Country Invitational draws teams from 12 villages
Racers came by boat, plane or car to Nome last week to race in the Nanook Cross Country Invitational last Saturday.
Teams arrived from Gambell, Golovin, Kotzebue, Koyuk, Savoonga, Shaktoolik, Shishmaref, St. Michael,
Teller, Unalakleet, and White Mountain to run in one of the four races.
“I’ve been in Shishmaref in 15 years and coached for 15 years, we haven’t been to this race in over 10 years, so I’ve got a really big team this year and we’re excited to finally race,” said Shishmaref Coach Amy Eningowuk.
Eningowuk said to practice the team runs of the stairs at the school or at the sand dunes, but nothing compares to the steep Nome course.
Coach Irving Ashenfelter from White Mountain said his team was looking forward to the Nome race when they saw it on the calendar because it’s a great way to prove themselves to the competition of the region. The team took a boat ride to Council and drove in a van from there. This way he could bring 11 kids.
The whole Unalakleet cross country team came to the event. “That was our goal,” said Coach Matt Roesch.
The elementary school race began at 11:15 a.m. it was shorter than the other races, a mile and a half, said Nome-Beltz Coach Ryan Fox.
The 5k races began at noon with the middle school/community race. The high school boys race began at 12:55 p.m. Finally, the high school girls race kicked off at 1:35 p.m
The event culminated in an awards ceremony. The top three placing runners in each race received a medal.
“It was a very awesome community event,” said Fox. “In cross country you can see progress from raw data and every one of our runners did better than in our time trial a month ago.”