Spokane Area Top Cross Country Runners to Compete at Champs Sports Regional Meet. 

November 30, 2022—This Saturday, December 3rd, Spokane’s top runners will be competing at Mt. San Antonio College (Mt SAC) in the Champs Sports (formerly Footlocker) West Regional Cross Country Championships. They will be racing against top runners from eleven other western states and U.S. citizens in overseas military installations. 

Spokane’s “Team Bloomsday” that will race at the West Regional meet—one of four Foot Locker regional competitions held across the country—is led by Evan Bruce of Lewis and Clark and Nicole Bissell of Central Valley. Both earned 4th place in their respective 4A races at Washington State High School Cross Country Championships on November 5th.  The 16 boys on this team are separated by a mere 47 seconds with the girls separated by only 59 seconds.  

The top ten male and female runners at the West Regional meet will advance to the Champs Sports Cross Country National Championships in San Diego on December 10th, joining the qualifiers from the Northeast, South and Midwest Regions. In 2018, the last year a Spokane team attended this meet,  Katie Thronson of Lewis & Clark and Turlan Morlan of Gonzaga Prep qualified for the meet, becoming the 28th & 29th  Spokane area runners to qualify for the Foot Locker (now Champs Sports) National Meet since it started in 1979.  

Bloomsday has sponsored the top runners to this meet since 1993. Michael Kiter is the Bloomsday representative who is leading the team this year and has experienced the trip first hand when he qualified for the national meet in 2000.   About that trip and the continued support Bloomsday gives these athletes he said, “This experience had a profound effect on me and my running career.  It gave me the confidence to run in college. I am excited to be able to take these stellar athletes down to race what is arguably one of the hardest courses on the West coast.  Year after year our athletes shine, and I am looking forward to this group carrying on the tradition.” 

More information on the Champs Sports Regionals and Nationals may be obtained by logging on to www.footlockercc.com/west. 

Runners sponsored by the Lilac Bloomsday Association: 

 

Boys’ Team	Girls’ Team
Hayden Blank	Nicole Bissell
Kade Brownlee	Raegan Borg
Evan Bruce	Alivia Bruno
Harper Churape	Kendall Carter
Graham Cleveland	Abby Crossley
Matt Conrad	Charlotte Cullen
Reid Headrick	Roxanne Frederickson
Noah Holden	Kate Lubbe
Charles Ledwith	Sadie Meyring
Johnny Lieb	Chloe Nelson
Jake Marchesseault	Charlotte Pedersen
Barrett Poulson	Kayla Ramsey
Ben Smith	Kayla Roberts
Ben Sonneland	Ella Swanson
Braeden Vlasak	Elle Vanning
Parker Westermann	Jane Wycoff