October 10, 2013 www.edmondsbeacon.com 7 - Edmonds Beacon

Meadowdale Athlete of the Week

Tennis

Senior Quint Turner has not missed a tennis practice all season. He comes to the court everyday looking to get better at his sport. Quint works very hard to win ev-ery match with a good attitude making him a great student ath-lete at Meadowdale High School. Quint Turner

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SPORTS

One was born a runner, while the other is learning as she

goes, but despite taking much different paths to this fall’s cross country season two athletes at Edmonds-Woodway High School are standing out.

Miler Haller was born into a family of runners. His dad, a former college runner, and mom had him running early.

“Both my parents are runners and they always had me run from a young age, at camps and just around small 5k’s here and there. It grew through middle school and into now,” said Haller, a junior at Edmonds-Woodway.

Senior Hailey Kettel joined the sport last season after years of playing soccer and running track.

“I think the atmosphere, that is a huge part of it,” Kettel said of why she joined the team. “This is like a family and we all get along. If someone has a bad day or a bad race, everyone will always be working on cheering that person up because a lot of us know what it feels like to feel like you failed.”

After so-so seasons last fall, both stepped up and found new inspiration in running, which has begun to pay off.

Alan Bonney, the Warriors head coach, said last season wasn’t the best for either athlete. He explained Haller didn’t put in enough effort to get the results he could have, while Kettel let the mental aspects scare her.

“Over the winter, he caught fire and the more he worked, the better he got,” said Bonney of Haller. “Hailey – I’ll put it this

way – she was scared of her own shadow. She would find a way to say ‘oh I can’t do that’, but again she worked and started to see results and started to feel like she can do this. Both of them are extremely talented.”

So far this season, the pair have won meets and both placed in the top 10 during the annual Nike Pre-Nationals race in Port-land, Ore. The race featured some of the top high school run-ners from throughout Washing-ton and Oregon. Haller was sec-ond in the boys race with a time of 17:03, while Kettel finished in seventh place in 20:07.

“I think both of them have the capability be in the top 15 at state,” said their coach.

Kettel said, though it’s still early in the season, she feels much better about where she is compared to last year.

“It’s been going really well, definitely a better start than last year,” she said. “I trained re-ally hard over the summer; I put down over 500 miles, which was a big goal for me. I just really took workouts that my coach gave me really seriously and it’s paying off. It usually takes about a meet or two to get a feel for things, but I feel like I came in the first meet like I was ready.”

Last spring, Kettel said her goal was to make it to state dur-ing track season, which she did. But now she realizes the goal has to be to do well at state, in order to keep pushing forward.

“I learned – that was my first state experience – my goal can’t just be state,” said the senior. “It has to be succeeding at state; it can’t just be getting to state be-cause once you’re there you’re like I’m here, I met my goal who

cares. I want to do well at state. I want to not only make it there, but run a solid race and try to go to the next level, the Border Clash, the big race between Or-egon and Washington.”

Haller has similar goals, in-cluding a solid performance at the state meet.

“This year my goal is to take top 10 in state and make it to Border Clash,” he said. In order to get there, Haller, who aver-aged 60 to 70 miles a week this summer, said he needs to keep running.

“I’d say keeping up my mileage and making sure I’m not losing on my mileage and making sure I’m not getting hurt and icing when I need to,” he said.

While the individual runners have their sights set on strong personal results, the Warriors team aspect is catching up.

“Our boys are starting to de-velop,” said Bonney. “In cross country you score seven run-ners and right now I think we have five, probably six, so we’re another year away from really making some noise. The girls we’re still in a world of hurt. The girls are struggling but the boys are getting there.”

Kettel said there are a lot of girls on the team who haven’t run competitively before and seeing them finish races is grati-fying.

“A lot of us, last year as a team, we weren’t really into it,” said Haller of the boys squad. “It was like a job coming out here and running. This last summer training together and its gotten more to where we’re out here to hang out and have fun and run. People are having more fun.”

No matter how this season

goes, Haller will have another next fall. For Kettel, she’s begin-ning to look at her post high school options, including run-ning in college. So far her top choices are on the West Coast, most likely at a smaller Division II School.

“Its just cool knowing I have all these options, and it’s cool to

see my hard work is paying off,” she said. “I’m going to have good options for my future. It’s nice to know that.”

The Warriors will compete again on Thursday, Oct. 10 in a meet at Stanwood against Oak Harbor and Stanwood. The meet is set to begin at 3:45 p.m.

Edmonds-Woodway runners find themselves on cross country courseby MEGAN MANAGANreporter@yourbeacon.net

EW cross country: Miller Haller and Hailey Kettel are two leading members of this year’s Edmonds-Woodway cross country team.

Beacon photo by Megan Managan

High school students are busy. Between classes,

homework, teams and extra curricular activities, choices have to be made about who can

do what and when. This year, a few girls who interested in joining the Warriors cheer-leading squad, but hoping to find a way to stay active in other events, the JV cheer team was created.

While varsity cheerleading

requires a lot of time and com-mitment, the JV team specifi-cally allows it’s members to do other things, like play on the soccer team.

“The biggest on was to be able to include more girls on the team,” said Edmonds-Woodway cheer coach Brianne Sturm. “By adding JV we’ve taken the program from 12 girls to 31. It’s been really great.”

This year’s JV squad includes 12 members, ranging from freshman to juniors. The team cheers at all JV home football games, and will begin cheering at JV basketball games in the winter.

“It’s been great, the girls and I really look at it as a whole team, but with two different responsibilities,” said Sturm.

Patty Tomsett’s eldest daugh-ter was a member of the var-sity cheer team at Edmonds-

Best of both worlds: Edmonds-Woodway JV cheer squad gives team time for everything

The Edmonds-Woodway JV cheer squad includes: Khalia Williams, Katie Cowan, Brittany Lancaster, Roseanne Gamboa, Katarina Hufford, Claire Tomsett, Lauren Little, Alexia Ballard, Amber Shin, Kyla Blair, Daydra Angus and Summer Grimmer.

by MEGAN MANAGANreporter@yourbeacon.net

see CHEER page 11 u

Photo courtesy of Patty Tomsett