While many of the states top runners were at the Doug Conley Championship meet, two Arizona teams headed to Oregon for the Jim Danner Invitational. Both the Mingus boys and the Flagstaff girls ran in the championship meet held at the Portland Meadows course, the same course as the Nike Team Nationals.
Tim Freriks (Mingus, AZ), stayed back during the start of the race waiting to make his move and when he finally did, he battled Cody Helbling (Lake City, ID), and Julian-Blake Cowan (Auburn-Riverside, WA) to the very end. Freriks last minute surge gave him the win and the course record as he led his SW#8 team to a third place finish behind second place Lindbergh, WA. and first place Jesuit, OR. "We're always striving to get our top-five gap down to be the best team we can be, but we felt we all ran solid races and no one really had a "bad day,"" said Freriks about his teams performance.
Freriks has been training to make the Footlocker National Team since his sophomore year but a team birth to Nike Team Nationals would be even better. "I'd want to be competing at Nike Team Nationals in December with the guys I sweat and work with everyday," says Freriks, "They're who push me to be the best I can be and without my team I wouldn't be the athlete I am today." Freriks placed 23rd at Footlocker last fall and will be the number five returnee in the December race. He placed 7th at Nike Team Regionals.
Freriks time of 15:18 was 9 seconds faster than the previous course record.