The Bingham High School (South Jordan, Utah) girls cross country team has just come off a great season, breaking a national record mid-season and posting a dominating win at the Utah state meet last week.
Bingham, ranked No. 1 in the country by Harrier's magazine, set a Utah scoring record of 19 points at the state meet.
Sophomore twin sisters Laura and Jackie Zeigle finished first and second, respectively. Senior Jessica Winters finished fourth, followed by senior Lisa Paxton, who finished fifth. Sophomore Charity Catmull crossed the finish line seventh.
At the Great American Cross Country Festival, a multi-state meet held in Charlotte, N.C., earlier this year, Bingham's top five runners finished in a national record-setting combined time of 91 minutes and 5 seconds. The performance smashed the 92 minute and 25 second record set by Irvine, Calif., in 1983.
At the Great American, Laura (pictured, right) and Jackie Zeigle finished second and third, respectively; Paxton, 10th; Catmull, 11th; and Winters, who had a respiratory illness, 19th.
Because course style and competition can vary in cross country, it's difficult to compare teams from year to year. However, some Great American spectators said it was the fastest girls cross country performance ever, Bingham Coach Jeff Arbogast, who described the course as fast but one that has its share of hills.
Now, the Minors want to break the record they set at the Great American when they run in the Mount SAC (San Antonio College) Foot Locker Western Regional Championships Dec. 4. At Mount SAC, held in California, Bingham will compete head-to-head with many of the best teams in the region.
But with the Utah season ending on Oct. 23, some might say that the advantage at the Foot Locker meet goes to the California schools, whose high school running seasons end just before the regional championships.
The Bingham team needs to retrain for the Foot Locker meet, but because its season is over, it can fine tune its runners specifically for the Mount SAC course.
Even though we only have five weeks, we're able to target our training specifically for the very, very hilly course," he said. "It's one of the more brutal courses in the country."
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