Great Oak Boys, Casey Clinger Win NXN


by Johanna Gretschel and Dennis Young

The Great Oak High School boys enter and exit Portland as the No. 1 team in the nation after scoring 114 points to win their debut at the Nike Cross Nationals.


On the individual side, Casey Clinger of American Fork (UT) continued his undefeated streak on Saturday by winning Nike Cross Nationals with a new course record of 15:03.2.

The win was not secured until the final straightaway, as Ben Veatch of Carmel, Ind. pushed him all the way through the line to finish in 15:04.8 as runner-up, his highest placement in four years of competition here. Alek Parsons of Ogden, Utah (3rd, 15:05.6) and Jaret Carpenter of Wayzata, Minn. (15:09.7) also ran under the meet record of 15:11 set last year by Tanner Anderson.

Paul Roberts of Lyons, Co. made the pace honest from the gun, clicking off 4:41 for the opening mile with a sizable lead pack in tow. Through two miles, Californians Spencer Dodds of Great Oak and Eduardo Herrera of Madera South ran at the front of the fray in 9:43, but the lead pack was still nearly fifteen runners deep.

Dodds fell back to place 15th overall in 15:26.1, though the senior's effort was still enough to lead Great Oak to the team title in their debut at the Portland championship. Cole Spencer (18th, 15:29), Isaac Cortes (27th, 15:37), Tony Robinson (83rd, 16:04.8) and Nelson Quintana (86th, 16:09.1) rounded out the scorers for an 114-point victory.

Clinger's individual win led his American Fork squad to a runner-up team finish with 163 points. The Cavemen nearly did not even qualify for the national championship after finishing fourth in the Southwest region and were forced to await an at-large selection.

Dana Hills of California was third with 181 points.

We caught up with Clinger after the race: 




And the Great Oak boys, who earned their donuts: 


The Wolfpack and third-place Dana Hills may have finally put to rest the idea--even brought up by Doug Soles last night--that California teams underperform in the cold and the mud that are more or less a permanent condition of a national championship in Oregon in December. After more than half a decade after California teams getting shut out of a team title entirely, Southern Section teams have now won three of the last six boys national championships. 

This was the Great Oak boys' first time ever qualifying for NXN, while American Fork reprised its runner-up finish from 2012. Dana Hills made its first podium ever in head coach Tim Butler's final cross country race. We interviewed the emotional duo of Butler and Great Oak's Soles after the race: 


How did Great Oak win the title, and with a five-man average seventeen seconds faster than FM's from last year to boot? Their top three finished in the top eleven in the team scoring, with Spencer Dodds (15th/5 points) Cole Spencer (18th/7 points), and Isaac Cortes (27th/11 points) leading the way. Tony Robinson and Nelson Quintana closed out the team scoring, clinching a forty-three second compression between their first and fifth finishers.

Other boys results of note:

-Timpanogos took fifth, giving Utah two teams in the top five.

-Bozeman of Montana took eighth and Marietta of Georgia was fifteenth, both marking the best performance by a team in their state history.

-Pre-race individual favorite Austin Tamagno was twenty-sixth.