Home Course: Blue Ponies host Havre Invite

For the Havre High cross country teams, the stretch run of the 2016 season is right around the corner. Yet, right now, all the Blue Ponies care about is putting on a good show for the hometown fans.

That's because this Saturday, for the first and only time this season, both Havre teams will compete at home in the Havre invitational. The meet starts at 10 a.m. Saturday and will take place on the campus of Montana State University-Northern.

“The kids are really looking forward to it,” HHS head coach Josh Holt said. “It's exciting and everyone wants to run well at their home meet. There will be parents, grandparents, friends, brothers, sisters, boyfriends and girlfriends there to watch; that makes it exciting.”

Holt also said that both Pony teams, which will be competing against a number of teams from different classifications, will have an advantage because they are familiar with the course.

“The course does have some hills,” Holt said. “But not as many as we saw on the course in Lewistown a couple weeks ago and since we are used to running it all the time, I think that should give us a little bit of an advantage. We are just more used to seeing that type of course.”

Both Havre teams will be looking to perform well at the Havre invite, but soon after that, the Ponies start preparing for their final meets of the season, starting with the Preview Meet in Helena next week. After that, it’s time for divisionals the next week and state after that.

“Right now, our goal is just to keep improving every week,” Holt said. “We are going to push it really hard these next couple of weeks and then ease off a little bit before state. Our goal is to have all of our runners get PRs (personal records) at state. That’s what we working towards.”

Leading the way for the Havre girls this week will be freshman Kadia Miller, who has put together an impressive season in her first year of varsity competition. Right behind her will be senior Nicole Parsons. The rest of the girls team includes Amelia Miller, Hannah Lunak, Kaylee Nystrom, Meggie Zook, Rhoda Peterson and Melanie Jones.

On the boys side of things, Jakob Keller will lead the way, while Austin Jones, who has been among Havre’s best runners all season, will also be in the mix. Outside of those two, Havre has some inexperienced runners, who seem to be getting better each and every week.

After Keller and Jones, the Ponies will have Quinn Reno, Aylan Pratt, Trevor Williams, Barrett Kilgore and Noah Azure. Both the girls and boys junior varsity teams will also be in action.

“I feel pretty good about both our teams,” “Holt said. “The kids are doing what they should be doing. They are at, where they should be at. We had a rest week last week, we stepped back a little to get kids healthy. This week, we jumped back into it and we are going to hit it hard until divisionals.”

The Havre Invitational will get underway Saturday morning with middle school and sub-varsity races. The varsity races start at 12:20 and 1 p.m.