Cross Country Wolverines are ready to race

By Heather Spaulding • September 28, 2024 1:30 am
Contributed photo Back row left to right: Grayson Matthews, Asher Cullen, Neil Gresseth, Nick Taylor, Ash Hamlin, Harrison Edge, Parker Duncan, Walter Rovente. Front row left to right: Autumn Vaughn, Flora Compton, Rylee Drew, Rose Jensen, Qwynne Price-Morris, and Liz Hough. Seated: Isabel Bashaw. Not shown: Clive Nye, Hugo Thompson, and Hunter Matthews
Contributed photo Back row left to right: Grayson Matthews, Asher Cullen, Neil Gresseth, Nick Taylor, Ash Hamlin, Harrison Edge, Parker Duncan, Walter Rovente. Front row left to right: Autumn Vaughn, Flora Compton, Rylee Drew, Rose Jensen, Qwynne Price-Morris, and Liz Hough. Seated: Isabel Bashaw. Not shown: Clive Nye, Hugo Thompson, and Hunter Matthews

This is only the second year Friday Harbor High School has had a cross-country team, and it has grown expenentially.

“We are up in numbers this year, from nine last year to 18 this year,” Coach Al Turnbow said, adding that returning are state participants from last year. Ash Hamlin, Isabel Bashaw and and Flora Compton.

Turnbow’s experience as a coach began in 1983 when he coached track and field for years. From there, he branched out to coaching cross country. “I started a Cross-country program at a school I taught in Guatemala. We created a league of schools that included several orphanages. It began as a fundraising 5K race that morphed into a High school/Junior high cross-country team,” he told the Journal last year.

For those who are not sure what exactly cross country is, it is racing over natural terrain. The racing competitions can take place on open country, fields, parks, or golf lands. In fact this year, Oct. 9 Friday Harbor will be hosting one of the competitions at the San Juan Golf and Country Club. Cross country is an endurance-based sport as competitors have to run long distances over varying terrains.

Although there aren’t many records on the school’s involvement in cross country, a quick dive into the yearbooks reveals the lost history.

According to FHHS yearbooks, the first cross-country team in the high school started way back in the ’60s. A lot earlier to contrary belief.

Rod Turnbull, Friday Harbor High School’s former athletic director, and now middle school principal, mentioned in his 21 years he’s never seen a cross-country team at the school. However, he did bring up how his late father, Dean Turnbull, coached cross country at the school many years ago. Looking back to the yearbooks it’s evident that cross country was practiced up until the 80s, where after that, its momentum deteriorated. In past years, according to Turnbull, many tried to revive the sport, but to no avail. Since the 80’s there hasn’t been a proper cross-country team at the high school. That is… till this year.

The team has been busy training and has had invitationals, the formal title of the racing competitions, every weekend. Islanders should keep an eye out as they may encounter the team racing near the school in the afternoons.

“It is a young team, they have been working hard,” Turnbow said, adding “It’s a fun group of kids.”