Cross country: Kermit second, Crane fourth in 2A boys state meet

ROUND ROCK The most nerve-wracking time for a cross country coach is not during the race, but afterward. One can estimate how the team may have scored, but the final tally is never certain until the results are printed out and posted.

Kermit coach Cameron Crane waited anxiously by the results board at the UIL state championships Saturday, but he just didn't know. Five of the seven runners on a cross country team count toward scoring, and, "I just couldn't find my fifth runner," Crane said. He speculated that his boys had placed third or fourth in class 2A.

He got a pleasant surprise: Kermit actually finished in second place, with 91 points. It was well behind the dominating 49 points posted by Wall, but they did manage to outduel their West Texas rivals at Crane High School (not to be confused with Kermit's coach of the same name). East Bernard placed third in 112, and Crane scored 144.

Other Permian Basin area highlights included an individual silver medal for Tomilee Loyd of Andrews among class 3A boys.

"I'm ecstatic," Coach Crane said later. "I didn't think we ran the best race we could have, but I don't think we could have caught Wall anyway. My fifth runner was further back than I'd like, but not really as bad as I thought."

That fifth runner for Kermit was Matthew Hernandez, who placed 40th among team-scoring runners, and 66th overall. (Some runners qualify for state as individuals, and their placings do not count toward the team scoring.) But whatever points may have been added on the back end, Kermit made up for them with a strong front end.

They were by the courageous performance of Trey Bale, who placed sixth overall and second in the team scoring with a time of 16 minutes, 46.78 seconds despite being ill during the five-kilometer (3.1 miles) race.

"I got sick in the middle of the race," Bale said. "At about one and a half miles I started to gag and threw up. I just knew I had to get through it and go hard so that we had a chance as a team."

It was the second consecutive year Bale finished sixth, although his time improved 18 seconds from 2007. "It's all right, but I'd like to have done better," Bale said.

Bale's effort was enough to edge out Crane's Joey Escalante by about half a second, setting the stage for the team duel between the schools. In team scoring places, Bale was followed by teammates Leeroy Garcia (eighth), Benjamin Vasquez (15th) and Michael Orona (26th).

Although East Bernard's fifth runner came in six places better than Hernandez, it wasn't enough to catch Kermit overall.

Orona and Hernandez ran about 12 hours after playing for Kermit's football team in a 20-14 playoff loss to Littlefield in Seminole.

Loyd's individual silver came via a furious finishing kick. Coming into the homestretch, the Andrews runner appeared to be firmly in third place.

"They started to pull away, and I had that stiff wind in my face, and I was about to give up," Loyd said.

But he had second thoughts when realized he was gaining on Llano's Marcos Vallejo. The Llano runner had led with a stiff early pace and now was paying for it.

It was too late to catch Argyle's Stephen Curry, "But the Llano runner, I saw he was dead and couldn't go anymore, so I went after him. I caught him maybe 20 meters or less from the finish."

Curry won in 15:49.90, and Loyd's 15:56.90 edged out Vallejo by about one and half seconds. Loyd's teammate Lucas Marquez placed 31st in 17:00.63.