Grizz start small in Billings but are soon to grow

A skeleton crew ran for the Rocky Mountain Grizzlies at the Billings Invitational Friday, but the team will soon be getting larger with the addition of three more runners and, later, a fourth.

Coach Tim Jones said a warm afternoon and an Amend Park course with tall grass led to some times that were up a bit from last year.

“It was warm, probably in the mid-80s,” Jones said. “They run in thick grass, so it’s a tough course. It’s flat, but it’s not golf course grass.

“All of the kids ran pretty well. We’re pretty inexperienced, so we ran everyone in JV, and there are lots of good JV kids.”

The top finisher for the Lady Grizzlies was junior Ellie Alvarez, who finished 73rd out of 121 runners in the junior varsity division with a time of 31:14. Sister Evynn finished 84th in 31:45, senior Rebecca Herren 96th at 33:35.

“Ellie had a great race,” Jones said. “She kept going and worked hard. She did a good job. Evynn was right behind her. She struggled a little during the race, but she hung in there and finished strong.

“This was Rebecca’s first cross country race. She’s just working on getting into shape and developing her conditioning and mental toughness. She beat her best practice 5K time by four or five minutes.

The only Rocky Mountain boy to run on Friday was freshman Cody Miller, who finished 98th out of 165 runners in the junior varsity division in a time of 24:17.

“Cody ran in middle school in Ohio, but this was his first competitive 5K,” Jones noted. “He did a good job. He worked hard throughout the race and is very coachable.”

Junior Dyami Rock and sophomore Sam Loyning have been practicing with the team and will compete for the Grizz at the next meet. Also joining the squad last week was freshman Zach Unruh.

Sophomore Dalan Wambeke is recovering from a pre-season injury but is conditioning in hopes of returning soon.

“We’re hoping to have him back before too long,” Jones said.

The Grizzlies are off this weekend and will return to action next Friday, Sept. 13, at the Big Horn Invitational. The middle school team will run at the Lovell Invitational today (Thursday) at 4 p.m. at Foster Gulch, then join the high school team in Big Horn next week.