Lake Stevens’ Roe takes second at Hole in the Wall Invitational

ARLINGTON — Whatever rivalry Jordan Oakes and Taylor Roe have is of the friendly variety.

Oakes, the defending Class 3A state champion and Holy Names Academy senior, edged Lake Stevens sophomore Roe, the defending Class 4A state champion, by four seconds Saturday to claim the girls’ varsity Division 1 race at the 33rd Hole in the Wall Invite at Lakewood High School.

“I love all these girls,” said Roe, whose time of 17 minutes, 21.6 seconds earned her a runner-up finish at the event for the second consecutive year. “I’ve run against them multiple times. It’s just great to come out and have a really competitive race with them.”

Oakes pulled away along the back stretch of the track to finish in 17:17.4 to claim the individual title in what turned into a steady downpour as the afternoon wore on.

“I love racing Taylor,” Oakes said. “We’ve become, I don’t want to say rivals, but she’s a competitor and I know when I race her I’m going to get a really fast time and it’s going to be a really good race.”

Saturday was no exception as both Oakes and Roe set personal records.

“I wanted to go out and see how I could do against elite competition,” Roe said. “It really tells me what kind of shape I’m in, what changes I can make for the season as far as things I should work on.”

Portland’s Jesuit High School, ranked 18th nationally and No. 2 in the Pacific Northwest earned the team title with 52 points and three runners in the top 10. Top-ranked and two-time Class 4A defending state champion Camas was second with 99 points, while Edmonds-Woodway claimed third with 110 points.

“I stay out of their way, basically,” E-W coach Al Bonney said of his runners. “We do most of our work and our talking during the week. We tried to come up with a reasonable race plan, but by the same token they do the running and I try to stay out of their way. They’re a very mature group for as young as they are. We just had some great performances.”

E-W’s Yukino Parle finished seventh in a personal record time of 18:03 and Lynnwood’s Malia Pivec finished just outside the top 10 as her time of 18:13.7 was good for 11th overall.

“I think definitely the field (was the toughest),” Parle said. “The weather was tough too, but the field had a lot of fast people.

“We do look at the times and think about what we can do as a team, what our goals are in this kind of situation,” Parle added.

The event began Saturday morning with middle school, freshmen/sophomore and junior varsity races before two different boys’ and girls’ varsity races were contested in flights determined by times. It rained off an on throughout the day before beginning to deluge about the time the girls’ Division 1 race began.

“It’s always fun in the rain,” Roe said. “It’s never going to be the greatest (conditions) in the rain, but they were pretty good.”

Sydney Boland of Edmonds-Woodway finished 14th in 18:33.9 and Kamiak’s Alicia Anderson was 18th in 18:31.1.

The Glacier Peak girls finished sixth overall while the Lake Stevens girls were ninth in the 28-team field.

Follow Herald Writer Jesse Geleynse on Twitter @jessegeleynse.