City High Sophomore Washburn Makes Statement in Return to State Cross Country Meet
Ryan Murken
Your Prep Sports
FORT DODGE – A year ago Ford Washburn made his state meet debut.
In his return trip to Fort Dodge on Friday the City High sophomore made a statement.
Washburn used a late surge over the final mile to place sixth at the Class 4A state meet on Friday at Lakeside Golf Course in Fort Dodge.
“I learned from last year you really have to go out fast,” Washburn said. “I thought I was going to die out after a mile or two but I just kept on going. I felt really good.”
Washburn placed 20th at the state meet last season as an individual qualifier.
Last week he helped City High snap a three-year streak without a state meet appearance with a third-place showing at the state qualifier.
With his own personal breakthrough performance on Friday Washburn helped show the state City High is ready to be a force going forward.
In its first trip to state since 2016 City High posted its best team finish in more than a decade, placing eighth with 224 points.
Sioux City North edged defending champion West Des Moines Dowling by eight points to win its first ever team title with 75 points.
“This is a really big motivator for us for the future,” Washburn said. “City hadn’t qualified in a couple of years so qualifying was really exciting and we were really happy but this gives us big things to shoot for the next couple of years.”
The top-10 finish was an impressive ending to a wild season for Washburn.
City High had to endure a three-week shutdown in September after starting the school year with online only classes and the sophomore missed more than two weeks with a hip injury.
Washburn showed no ill effects of the injury on Friday steadily passing runners over the final mile to climb into the top 10.
He was more than five seconds behind Cedar Rapids Prairie senior Andrew Bickford who placed fifth in 16:06.8.
“I was passing a lot of people, I wasn’t really expecting it,” Washburn said. “I don’t know where that came from. I just had some motivation to run past everybody.”
Washburn missed two weeks in October with a hip injury that had hampered him for most of the season.
He returned to place seventh at the state qualifier last week at Pleasant Valley.
“That was my first time racing in three weeks and I was really dumb in that race, I went out way too fast,” Washburn said of the state qualifier. “I just completely died out in that race and I’m really glad I didn’t do that here.”
Rather than fade at the end of the race Washburn continued to get stronger over the final mile of the 5,000 meter race.
He took more than 10 seconds off his time from the state qualifier and improved his place from last week against the best runners in the state.
Perhaps just as importantly Washburn showed that City High is ready to take a step forward the next two seasons.
“I hope the next two years we are going to be really good because our top four runners are all sophomores,” Washburn said. “If we all stick with it and keep on improving hopefully we can be really good the next few years.”
The top three finishers for City High on Friday were all sophomores and the Little Hawks had just one senior in their state meet lineup.
Sophomore Truman Thompson finished 19th overall in 16:26.1 and sophomore Noah Carey was 60th overall in 17:01.5.
“I think we can keep building off this and what we did as sophomores,” Thompson said. “Hopefully we can become one of the top teams in the state by the time we are all seniors.”
Class 4A State Meet
At Lakeside Golf Course
Team scores – 1. Sioux City North 75; 2. West Des Moines Dowling 83; 3. Cedar Falls 86; 4. Waukee 131; 5. Dubuque Hempstead 137; 6. Liberty High 172; 7. Cedar Rapids Prairie 183; 8. City High 224; 9. Ankeny Centennial 243; 10. Johnston 276; 11. West High 280; 12. Pleasant Valley 281; 13. Urbandale 295; 14. Norwalk 298; 15. West Des Moines Valley 393
Individual medalists – 1. Jaysen Bouwers (Sioux City North) 15:31.2; 2. Ryan Winger (Dubuque Hempstead) 15:45.7; 3. Jackson Heidesch (West Des Moines Dowling) 15:53.8; 4. Will Lohr (Sioux City North) 16:00.2; 5. Andrew Bickford (Cedar Rapids Prairie) 16:06.8; 6. Ford Washburn (City High) 16:11.2; 7. Anthony Moran (Urbandale) 16:14.4; 8. Connor Kilgore (Dubuque Senior) 16:14.6; 9. Will Ryan (West Des Moines Dowling) 16:15.1; 10. Joel Burris (Cedar Falls) 16:15.3; 11. Alex McKane (West High) 16:15.6; 12. Jacob Christensen (Waukee) 16:15.7; 13. Cade Muller (West Des Moines Dowling) 16:16; 14. Vincent Hodges (Waukee) 16:19.3; 15. T.J. Tomlyanovich (Cedar Falls) 16:19.3
Liberty High (172) – 18. Bowen Gryp 16:28.1; 32. Aidan Decker 16:44.5; 37. Caleb Schillinger 16:45.6; 41. Jack Kinzer 16:47.2; 44. Christian Montover 16:52.4; 64. Jordan Robinson 17:17.8; 80. Gavin Keeney 17:33.5
City High (224) – 6. Ford Washburn 16:11.2; 17. Truman Thompson 16:26.1; 50. Noah Carey 17:01.5; 67. Elliot Dunnwald 17:22.2; 84. Parker Max 17:39.5; 92. Ammon Smith 17:51.1; 101. Hayden Beerends 18:13
West High (280) – 10. Alex McKane 16:15.6; 36. Caden Noeller 16:45.5; 70. Tosh Klever 17:23.8; 81. Sebastian Cochran 17:33.5; 83. Drew Peterson 17:38.1; 95. Mohan Kumar 17:57.5; 100. Asher Overholt 18:09.4
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