2022 Fall High School Sports Preview: Mt Spokane cross country wants more from state meet

The winning mindset has always been with Scott Daratha wherever he has gone to coach.

In the mid-’90s as an assistant at Mead, he and the legendary Pat Tyson guided the Panthers boys cross country program to numerous state team titles in what was the golden era of high school running in the state of Washington.

After 12 years at Mead, Daratha took on his first head coaching duties at Deer Park – a program that at the time hadn’t won a league meet in 23 years. In the 11 years he was there he was able to flip the narrative, turning the Stags boys into a competitive program that brought home back-to-back state titles in 2016 and ‘17.

His time was well spent at Deer Park but a part of him missed coaching in the Greater Spokane League. After the 2017 season, an opportunity came knocking on his door to coach at Mt. Spokane. Similar to Deer Park, the Wildcats had not had much recent success when he got there.

“When I came here, guys just didn’t quite have the right drive,” he said.

Now entering his fifth season, he feels he has the most complete team yet.

“This is my fifth year as the head coach and they’re starting to understand why we do what we do,” Daratha said. “They understand the concept, they’re willing to put in the miles, they’re willing to do the things they have to do and make the sacrifices necessary to be successful.”

After qualifying for the state 3A cross country meet in for the first time in eight years last year, the Wildcats boys team enters the 2022 campaign with plenty of momentum for a group that went above and beyond their own expectations. They finished the 2021 spring season last at the GSL culminating event.

“We were kind of thinking it was going to be another building year,” senior Matt Conrad said on the 2021 season. “We did not expect to be taking sixth at state, so it kind of was so euphoric as a team. It was an eye-opening experience. Like, ‘Wow, this is what hard work does for you.’ It was just a great feeling.”

It was a tale of two seasons for the Wildcats in the span of three months of competing. They finished with a below .500 record in the GSL regular season meets but ran their best race of the season at the District 8 championships, finishing third overall to earn the final berth to the state meet.

The sixth-place finish at state was the highest finish by a Mt. Spokane group since the 2013 season when it took fourth overall. The top five individuals on the team finished within the top 100 competitors, led by then-junior Ben Smith, who placed 31st in a time 16 minutes, 48.3 seconds.

“I think they ran well,” Daratha said. “I tell them with my years of experience, the Mead guys never had a bad state meet and we’re going to prepare you and do the same workouts that the best runners in the history of the state were doing…They went in and believed in what was happening.”

The Wildcats return five of their seven state competitors, including four 4A/3A all-league performers first-teamer Smith, second-teamers Conrad and sophomore Parker Westerman, and honorable mention senior Hayden O’Neal. Junior Sam Newton rounds out the top five.

In addition , senior Ben Sonneland makes his return to the cross country scene for the first time since his sophomore season after taking on football this past fall. In the 2020 COVID season, he was Mt. Spokane’s top cross-country runner.

“During track season, I realized how much I missed running,” Sonneland said.

Sonneland comes into the fall after having competed at the 3A state track meet this past spring for the first time where he placed third overall in the 800-meter (1:54.86), 16th in the 1,600 (4:21.98), and was a member of the Wildcats’ 4x400 relay state champion team.

“The satisfaction of doing a good workout or having a good run was a better feeling than what I got from football,” he said. “That’s one of the reasons why I wanted to come back. It’s fun to win races, but it’s also fun to know the people you are competing with. With football, I didn’t know anyone.”

Sonneland will be a good boost for a team that replaces Luke Zweisler, its lone senior last season. However, one runner who Daratha believes will make the biggest leap this season is sophomore Kade Brownell – an alternate runner on the state team who shares similar characteristics to some of the Mead harriers from the ‘90s.

“We used to say the Mead boys were blue-collared,” Daratha said. “They would grab their lunch boxes, go to work, and give an honest day’s work. Kade’s not afraid to put in the necessary work to be the best. He’s old school.”

The goal for the Wildcats is simple this season – build on last year’s successes. Getting on the podium is the ideal scenario for a team with tons of veteran talent back, but Smith – now the senior leader in this group – knows they want more.

“Getting a trophy at state would be an amazing achievement to hit, but I think our true ultimate goal is we want to go to state to win,” Smith said.

“After the meet last year, it was that moment where you realize this has a chance to go somewhere big. The entire team, other than one senior, was going to be coming back. We knew we had the ability at that point to come back and be better, so that gave us the motivation to keep working at it.”

“This will be the best trained group,” Daratha said. “They finished that state meet and each person thought in their minds as, ‘I really didn’t do everything I could; I didn’t give it 100% .’ What happens if we do give it 100% ? What can we accomplish by doing that? I think that’s where we kind of got together and made a commitment to do the things you used to see in the old GSL.”

The Mt. Spokane boys open the 2022 season at the Timberlake Farragut Invitational on Saturday in Athol, Idaho.