These Gals Have Done Some Great Things But They’re Not Done Yet
The trend has been the Scobey High School cross country girls' friend simply due to the fact the numbers never lie.
Since re-booting the program in 2019, after being dormant since the late 1970s, the Scobey girls have been trending up the Class C ladder, meaning the finishes at the state meet have been working their way down point-wise.
In 2019 the Lady Spartans placed 8th with 85 points on a snowy/slushy golf-course surface in Great Falls. In 2020 in Kalispell they placed 7th with 74 points and dropped down to 4th with 68 points in 2021 at Missoula. In 2022, also on the University of Montana Golf Course track, they earned the third-place trophy with a 55-point showing, just five back of tying Culbertson. This past season at Rebecca Farm northwest of Kalispell they tied with Roberts 27-27 but the Rockets soared into the state championship by way of the tie-breaker system, which is going to the fourth-place runner of each team with the lower score the deciding factor: Roberts' fourth girl placed 16th, Scobey's 22nd, Roberts wins.
Without getting into it too deep, the Scobey girls are a solid contender to possibly secure their third consecutive trophy at the state meet in 2024. It can be told right now if all the Roberts girls that, with the exception of the sole graduating senior, competed this past season return in 2024, they are going to be tough to beat. Belt will also be in the mix as will Scobey. If North Toole County (Sunburst) and West Yellowstone can come up with a solid number-3 runner, they both become part of the top-three Class C conversation. The biggest question of these top teams in 2024 is who are the incoming freshmen and/or transfer students who can run like the wind?
For Scobey that is current eighth grader Hazel Sones, who placed fifth in the Culbertson Invitational varsity race in a field of 28 in the regular-season finale. As far as the Spartans go, her 23:27.11 that day over 3.1 miles was only bettered by senior Mia Handran, who was clocked at 20:21.22 for first place (junior Mya Green took the day off). Sones is only going to get better and should make a big impact on the 2024 varsity roster (note: current Scobey seventh grader Brooklyn Hughes is even faster than Sones by an average of 1 minute and 10 seconds per race so watch for her to possibly be running a varsity race or two in 2024).
Speaking of averages, let's take a look at all of them produced by the 2023 high school and middle school kids, starting with the high school girls (the following figures do not include the junior varsity races some of the high school Spartans were clocked in). As a team the varsity girls scored 558 points (55.8 per meet) and totaled 24 team places for an average of 2.4-place per meet: Green, currently a junior, had an average time in nine varsity races of 20:24 for an average finish of 1.6th-place in an average field of 53;
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