Sometimes it obvious, sometimes it’s not and sometimes there are others that are deserving of the honor, too. The latter is what we felt when picking this week’s HOKA Athletes of the Week.
The obvious choices for our respective male and female recipients are Portsmouth’s Sean Gray and Pilgrim’s Keaney Bayha. For the second straight week, Gray was lights out against his competition. A week after his dominating performance at the Wickham Park Invitational, the Patriots’ junior was even better at this past Saturday’s Maine X-C Festival of Champions. Gray won by more than 200 meters with a course record of 14 minutes, 55.6 seconds for the five-kilometer course. The Patriots’ Bayha, who has been our No. 1 harrier through most of the fall campaign, nearly broke 18 minutes at the Great American X-C Festival on Saturday where she was 21st overall in the featured Race Of Champions (ROC).
Speaking of the N.C., meet, that’s where our third runner comes into play. The one that we feel is also deserving of our weekly honor, Hendricken’s Colby Flynn. The Hawks’ talented sophomore is further proving to us that he shouldn’t be ignored for a top placement at the State Meet next month by racing to a 5K best of 15:35.70 in the ROC, an effort that placed him 38th overall against the finest from the east coast.
