Pony cross-country travels to Belgrade

The Havre High cross country team heads to Belgrade this Saturday for its first official scoring meet of the season at the Belgrade Invitational.

The Blue Ponies are coming off a good showing at the Cut Bank Time Trials last Saturday, but head coach Kim Ray is looking forward to the full nature of a race that her runners will see this weekend.

"It is going to give our girls a chance to find out what we can do as a team in a race format," Ray said. "It also gives us the opportunity to see a lot of the teams that are in our division and find out what those teams have for competitors."

The top seven runners on the Havre team will be Alicia Rundquist, Shannon Newth, Emily Kostelecky, McKayla Patterson, Rebecca Hilliard, Katie Siebrasse, and Andree Peterson. The rest of the Havre High team will run in a JV meet as well.

"Our team is really tight right now as far as times go," Ray said "There are about 11 girls that are right there competing for the last three varsity spots. So, I told the girls that will be running the JV meet that this is a great opportunity for them to go out there and do well and try to win that race because their all so close that one of them may be on varsity sooner or later."

As for the competition the Ponies will see several AA schools including Bozeman, as well as, several of the teams from their own division like host Belgrade, Lewistown, Butte Central, and Livingston along with Colstrip and Sidney.

The course for this race also presents several challenges according to Ray.

"This is a very narrow course with a river and a lot of trees," Ray said. "So the girls are really going to have to be aware of where they are and where they are in the pack and pick the right moments to make passes and try not to get bunched up."

The JV race gets underway at 10:40 a.m. while the varsity runners will start an hour later. All the action is Saturday at the Gallatin County Recreation Area.