CG boys finish 4th at state; Cardwell earns Top-10 status
EUGENE – Carter Bengtson has had difficulty kicking the head cold and stomach flu that’s been nagging him for the past month or so.
But the Cottage Grove senior had no problems outkicking the competition Saturday at the 2024 Cross Country State Championships at Lane Community College, winning his second consecutive state title with a time of 15:41.2 in the 5K race.
“I had a weird sickness going into districts,” Bengtson said after the race. “It could be other people getting sick – I don’t know, stuff happens.”
Racing on an unseasonably warm and dry day, Bengtson finished 17.2 seconds ahead of Marist’s Conor Thompson.
“This is the best the state meet has been in my four years,” he said. “It’s usually rainy and horrible.”
Thompson gave Bengtson a run for his money in the early going, but Bengtson didn’t allow him to get too close.
“I told myself I was not going to look back, but I still looked back a couple of times just to judge,” Bengtson said. “I just tried to focus on going straight ahead and finishing. I knew Conor would be close. I just ran to see how far I could get away from him. At some point I needed to drop him.”
Winning titles has become par for the course for Bengtson. The big news on Saturday was the Lions’ fourth-place team finish, which was their goal to start the season.
“The kids came in and established a culture, and it came together for us today,” Cottage Grove coach Ricky Knutson said. “We tried to keep our guys together. The goal was to keep those gaps as close as possible – do not let your teammates go – we weren’t necessarily in a pack.
“Micah Hanke had a great finish. Coming out of the ponds he was our sixth guy, then he passed 4-5 guys. We only finished ahead of 5th by two points – his finish was a game-changer.
“It’s hard to put it into words. I wish they would smile a little bit more. We came in ranked sixth and finished fourth, so I couldn’t be more proud of them.”
While he takes his leadership role seriously, Bengtson said his teammates deserve all the credit for reaching their goal.
“I’m just one of seven – the other six guys took care of business,” he said.
Easton Hutchins (17:26.4) placed 26th for the Lions, followed by David Culbert (17:47.2) in 39th, Hanke (18.00.1) in 47th, Jackson Gifford (18:06.5) in 51st, and Frank Garcia (18:10.4) in 56th.
Ella Cardwell enjoyed a historic day for the Cottage Grove girls, coming in ninth with a time of 19.33.6, the best time in school history for a state meet.
“Five of our girls were sick, so we knew coming in it was a matter of getting to the finish line,” Knutson said. “Our girls finished 11th, but we knew it would be a rough day with only two healthy girls out of seven.”
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When Carson Buergey ran a 15:29 at the Umqua Invite this season, he broke a 44-year Thurston High School record set by Cory Randall, who went on to run for the University of Oregon and compete in the 1984 Olympic Trials.
He’s also leading a resurgence of the Colts’ cross country program.
“Our two best boys runners are juniors, but after that we have a lot of freshmen and sophomores,” Thurston coach Devin VansCoy said. “Our girls have a lot of freshmen too. They were bummed they didn’t make it to state – our boys and girls both finished fourth at district, so we just missed.”
Buergey placed 12th in Saturday’s 5A race with a time of 15:42.4, which was 59.1 seconds behind race winner Tayvon Kitchen of Crater.
“Crater is really loaded,” VansCoy said. “5A is more competitive than 6A this year.”
In the 3A boys race, sophomore Gage Roper of Pleasant Hill clocked a time of 17:08.4 to finish 19th. For the Billies girls, two freshmen – Annaleigh Epperson (20:39.8) and Nellie Smith (20:41.6) – ran together and finished 32nd and 33rd.
