Three Parkersburg High cross country runners finished in the top 10 in last week’s Lebanon Running Warrior Invitational. Pictured from left to right are Connor George (first), Morgan Metz (first) and Ricardo Salazar (10th). (Photo Provided)

PARKERSBURG — The Parkersburg High School cross country program of head coach George Angelos is looking forward to the 25th annual Chick-fil-A Invitational set for a 9 a.m. varsity girls start on Saturday at the Wood County 4-H Grounds in Mineral Wells.

The Big Reds are coming off a solid performance last weekend at the Lebanon Running Warrior Invitational.

Junior Morgan Metz topped the field with a time of 18 minutes and 12 seconds while senior Big Red Connor George sped to victory with a time of 15 minutes and 56 seconds.

Coach Angelos’ squad had three other boys crack the top 25 with senior Ricardo Salazar (10th, 16:52), sophomore Rogan Mincks (13th, 16:58) and junior Carter Thorpe (15th, 17:00). PHS junior Audrey Wagoner placed 11th with a time of 19:47 while senior Olivia Carpenter was 25th after crossing in 20:27.

“It’s basically Cincinnati, Ohio. They had just an outstanding performance,” admitted coach Angelos, who watched Carpenter and Thorpe be honored as performers of the meet as Metz’ clocking was a top-five all-time effort in school history. “Honestly, we’ve really had a great summer and we’ve had a great early block of training. It kind of showed there. Obviously, you have 32 accepted teams in each field. We had 10 personal bests from our returning runners.

“It was just a really encouraging start. The girls were as high as a top four team in the state last year and the boys were the same and we lost a lot. Graduation hit us hard. We knew we had a couple good middle schoolers that were going to help plug those gaps. We realized we didn’t have nearly enough to be the kind of team that we were on paper so we really kind of thought we’d be taking a step back this year until we could reload.”

However, that doesn’t actually appear it’s going to be the case.

“We’ve had a volleyball player, a basketball player, two football players and a handful of kids who didn’t run cross country in middle school come out for cross and they have, early season, just really exceeded all expectations,” noted coach Angelos. “We’re real optimistic about what we can be this year and what we can do.

“We’re ranked fourth in boys and girls right now, which it doesn’t mean a ton because they don’t factor in all the new kids that people don’t know about, but we’re real optimistic about what we’re doing and where we’re heading. We just hope we can keep it going.”

The Big Red head man is looking forward to their upcoming meet and knows staying healthy is always a key.

“We’re excited about Chick-fil-A, a home meet, and that means a lot to us, but at the same time our goals are much bigger and deeper than that,” said the coach. “We’re not going to be running our full squad in some of the races with an eye on other races, but we’re excited to run. It’s going to be a big race and we get to be home. Next week (Friday) we are in Huntsville, Alabama at one of the top 11 meets in the country at the Southern Showcase. All of our returners are just really, really locked in and once again had a great summer block of training. They had a great early season block of training and they’ve all progressed. The great part is that they have brought along these individuals.

“You know, many of which, not all, obviously we’ve got a Hadley Edwards and a Calvin Lantz that were really, really good in middle school, but they’ve brought along a lot of athletes that have never run cross country and they’ve done a great job of mentoring them. The sky is kind of the limit where some of these individuals are going to go. We have an exciting season and then our returners are clearly taking the next step. A large handful of our key returners PR’d so they are getting better and then we have a bunch of young runners that we really didn’t expect that are exceeding expectations. We’re just excited to see how it plays out and if they keep progressing where it can go.”

Contact Jay Bennett at jbennett@newsandsentinel.com