By By PETER WILLIAMS, Staff Writer
If you ask Jessica Rogers when she started training for cross country, the Washington High School senior will answer that she never stopped.
She runs two to three hours a day, six days a week.
On Monday, her efforts paid off. Rogers finished well ahead of the pack with a time of 21:58 in a four-team meet at Northside High School. Farmville Central won the overall women’s meet, but Rogers proved her point.
It was only Washington’s second meet of the year and Northside’s first.
Panther coach Charlie Woolard and his young men also came away winners. Northside scored 42, Farmville 51, Washington 59 and Williamston 75. In the women’s division it was Farmville 31, Northside 34 and Washington 67. Williamston didn’t have enough runners to compile a final score.
For Woolard, his team numbers didn’t mean so much as the fact that many of his runners posted their personal best times during the first meet of the season.
In the men’s division, Northside’s James Cadle won with a time of 19:48 followed closely by Williamston’s Stephen Silverthorne at 20:01. Northside’s Alex Cutler (21:15) and Jakob Pernov (21:13) also put in a good showing.
The Williamston team, under coach Myra Register, only had five men and three women running in Monday’s event yet two of the top five men were Williamston runners. The other was Dirk Prettenhofer, a transfer student from Germany. He came in with a time of 21:02, just behind Washington’s Brandon Sule who finished at number four at 20:37.
Washington coach Laurie Lietz was also pleased with her team.
The Northside women’s team did lose a player in Elizabeth Harris, a sophomore who had a knee injury.
Northside will run again Thursday at Williamston. The big date is the Northside Invitational. Coach Woolard expects 250 to 300 runners at the event from 15 schools. The date is Sept. 8 at 1 p.m.