Members of the Parkersburg High School boys cross country team will be competing at Saturday’s WVSSAC High School State Cross Country Meet at Cabell Midland High School in Ona. (Photo Provided)
PARKERSBURG — Now in year four of his second stint as the head coach cross country coach at Parkersburg High School, Big Reds boss George Angelos is more than excited about the final Mountain State race of the season on Saturday.
Although the red and white boys and girls aren’t expected to bring home any team hardware from the state meet in Ona at Cabell Midland, which gets underway at noon for the girls and 12:45 p.m. for the boys, suffice it to say things are going in the right direction for PHS.
“We’ve really had buy-in on what it takes to have a good program and what it takes to be good at this sport, even though our middle school program has been the bottom half of the county since I’ve been coach,” said coach Angelos, whose top predicted finishers by runwv.com are junior Connor George (8th) and sophomore Morgan Metz (15th).
“We’ve had a lot of kids who have bought in and have elevated themselves and they are now one of the top handful of teams in the state
and I really give them a lot of credit.”
The PHS boys are coming off a Region IV championship over runner-up Cabell Midland, 47-49, which featured Parkersburg South’s Josh Gill earning a berth to Ona by finishing sixth.
The Knights upended the Big Reds, 41-43, previously at the Mountain State Athletic Conference championships where George led the boys with a fourth-place effort and Metz finished third to help the girls to a runner-up MSAC showing.
“We just have a really strong group of guys, very tight, very committed, very focused with just high goals,” admitted coach Angelos, who also has senior Walker Jones and junior Ricardo Salazar predicted for a top 25 finish.
The boys also will be running seniors Christian Rutherford and Lucas Jenkins, junior Anthony Herrera and freshman Rogan Mincks.
“They’ve been just awesome to coach this year,” Angelos added. “Their goal was to finish in the top three of every meet during the season and they’ve done that at every meet they’ve competed at where we’ve run our top guys.
“They’ve hit that goal and they’ve hit their academic goal. I think it was 3.9 I believe team GPA and now we come off only the first regional championship in over 20 years and only the second in the last 40.”
A challenging schedule definitely has helped.
“We really wanted to create a schedule that was a balance of fun and creative, but challenging and we didn’t have a single meet other than the dual, which was required, that had less than a 20 team field,” Angelos said. “We wanted to be battle tested this time of year. We ran a race in Chicago that was a monster big race. We did two really big races in Ohio. The Les Eisenhart was like one of the top races in the state of Ohio.
“We’re actually going to North Carolina as a team to compete (Nike Southeast Regional on Nov. 23), so four states on our schedule this year and our guys are battle tested. They’ve kind of been overlooked most of the year and they are coming in as fourth-ranked, which is the highest ranking all year, but they really feel like they have a chance to continue to shine like they have all year. You know the state meet is unpredictable and we’re excited to maybe be a sleeper.”
The Big Red girls are predicted to finish fifth and also will run seniors Katie Rutherford, Ellie Hines, Olivia Carpenter, sophomore Audrey Wagoner as well as freshmen Calli Angelos and Brie Winans.
“Carpenter is going to be running this weekend and (senior) Thea (Bourdeaux) is going to be the alternate,” said the coach, who didn’t have Carpenter available at the regional.
The climb also has continued for the PHS girls.
“Our group has been just like the boys,” coach Angelos continued. “Very focused, very committed, very consistent. Obviously we have great senior leadership with Katie Rutherford and Ellie Hines and Olivia Carpenter have provided great leadership and then we have the freshmen in Calli and Brie Winans. Brie has been a huge surprise and really has helped us out, and Audrey Wagoner is a former county champion. Our girls have been rock solid all year and they come in and have just had an outstanding season.
“The triple-A field though up top is extremely loaded. You look at University, Morgantown and Cabell, I mean cracking that top three, that’s not something that’s happened in a long time. To crack the top three is going to be a huge challenge, but we’re in the hunt. We’re in that top five group, just like our boys and state meet Saturday when things can get crazy, we like the stability of our team to go in there and maybe shock some people.”
Although the Big Reds will lose some quality seniors to graduation, Angelos firmly believes the PHS program just needs to continue staying the course.
“We are going to have to continue developing runners who love the sport, have talent and want to put the time in,” stressed the coach.
“We’re proving with a lot of these kids like Brie Winans and Ricardo Salazar and a lot of them, we’re proving we can develop runners and we’ll have to continue doing that.”