Utah Boys Highlights At RunningLane National Championships

As mentioned earlier, Utah sent a total of seven programs to RunningLane, and five were invited to participate in the championship race. That's a sixth of the field coming from the Beehive state!  The programs that represented us were American Fork, Corner Canyon, Farmington, Mountain View, and Riverton.  Skyridge and Orem also flew out some of their squad as well and had one of their athletes compete in that championships race as an individual.

    In the Boy's Gold Race, Farmington was our top team finishing sixth overall in what will go down as the fastest high school race in history as of now!  Farmington was led by Ethan Peterson who finished 87th overall in a time of 15:05.  Farmington had the fourth tightest spread in the field with just 28 seconds separating their 1-5.

    American Fork was our next top finishing team who came in tenth overall.  The defending champions came in with experience and that helped guide them to a top placement in which was a more competitive field than last year.  They were led by senior Jayden Fitzgarrald who finished 40th overall in a time of 14:44.

    Next was Mountain View who was only 11 points behind American Fork in 12th place overall. They were led by the "fastest JV" runner in our State Parker Barnes who finished 67th overall in a time of 14:59.  Barnes is just a junior and you know that he has just got to be itching for the day where he can run varsity in season in Utah but that will have to wait until the fall of 2022 when his year off from student transfer protocols is up.

Our next two team finishers were Corner Canyon who finished 15th overall in the race and Riverton who finished 17th.  These two schools and technically Mountain View were not ranked in our national rankings going into this race, yet they walked away from RunningLane handing out a few upsets left and right really flexing that Utah strength on the national stage.  Corner Canyon also had the second tightest spread in the field with only 16 seconds separating their 1-5 runners.

*Tayson Echohawk enjoying himself after a historic performance (Thanks for the Pic Tayson!)

   When You run the fastest 5000m time ever by a Utah High School athlete you can have some pull on what photo we use for you so thanks for sending us this picture Tayson Haha.

     For the Individuals, our top finisher was none other than the southwest regional runner-up and now All-American Tayson Echohawk of Orem.  Tayson ran an incredibly smart yet gutsy race hanging with that lead pack for a good amount of the race.  Tayson surged at the end for a final placement of 12th overall and a new PR in the 5000m of 14:24 which will go down as the fastest 5000m performance ever by a Utah Prep.  Tayson passed the two-time NCAA Champion himself Conner Mantz who formerly held this title with his best 5000m performance in high school coming from the 2013 Region 5 Championships where he obviously won in a time of 14:32. Not to worry, Mantz will still hold the title for the fastest 5000m time run on Utah soil but Echohawk still has one more year of eligibility to go and his legs have the speed to hit that mark.  

    Also representing Utah in the Gold race as an Individual was Seth Wallgren of Skyridge who finished 62nd overall in a time of 14:55.  Wallgren was a part of the Skyridge boys team who finished in a top spot at last year's RunningLane National Championships. 

Boys Individual 5000m Results