The cross-country tradition continues in Sanders County as the 2026 Western B-C divisional meet will once again be held at River’s Bend golf course outside of Thompson Falls Thursday.

Blue Hawk coach Sarah Naegeli, the long-time keeper of the flame for this event which seems to have found its permanent home in Thompson Falls, said she expects area running teams and their entourages to arrive late Thursday morning for races beginning at 11:30 a.m. with the combined middle school race followed by the high school girls at noon and the high school boys at 12:30.

“It looks like we'll have about 100 runners in the Western B Boys race and 50-60 in the girls,” she said. “Middle school looks to be about 40 boys and girls.”

The Hawks completed the regular season running at the Mission Shadow Duels meet in Pablo Saturday. Although the race formerly featured hay bale jumps among other semi-obstacles, Naegeli said new MHSA rules no longer allow the placement of bales on the running course, but that her runners still had a good time in the end.

“It was cold, windy and muddy,” she said, “but really great racing,” adding that the course did steer runners through the creek on the course a few times instead.

One quirk of the Shadow Duels that Naegeli really likes is the way the runners are released on the course. “I always love this race (as do the runners) because they go out in reverse order and have no idea where they should be running, or really what their time is,” she explained. “The seventh runner from each team starts, then 20 seconds later the sixth runners from each time, 20 seconds later the 5th and so on.”

Naegeli said the reverse order start actually led to some season best times for her unaware runners. “I suspected that some of them could race better times and they did,” she said.

As usual, All-State B harrier Weston Block led the Hawks in with a team-best time of 17:20, Caleb McCray registered a personal record time of 18:18, Nathan Baxter clocked out

in 19:26, Wyatt Clawson 23:05, Alec Cribbs 23:32, Zach Bortz 23:45 and Brody Smith (a new transfer from Washington) 245:36.

Cribbs, an eighth grader, set a new personal best time by almost three minutes and qualified for the state meet in Pablo, and Bortz also set a 20 second PR in the race.

Naegeli said dual-sport harriers Audrey Fairbank and Aubrey Baxter did not run Saturday at they had a volleyball match in Thompson Falls.