Senior Ingrid Venable, facing the camera, returns to lead the Mountain Lion girls’ cross country team as captain this season.
How can it get any better than last year for the Liberty Bell High School girls’ cross country program?
The Mountain Lions surprised the Washington B ranks with their 2025 run to the state championship over Chewelah and traditional powerhouse Pope John Paul II (Olympia) in Pasco last November. The boys joined them on the podium, earning an outstanding third place in the 2B team standings. That after both teams placed sixth in 2024.
If that wasn’t enough, Liberty Bell Head Coach Liam Daily was named the 2025 Girls B Coach of the Year by the Washington State Cross Country Coaches Association (WSCCCA) as a recognition of their leap up the podium. Daily, who won a similar award in 2023 as WSCCCA Middle School Coach of the Year, was quick to recognize the role that assistant coach Becca Agnor and Liberty Bell track coach Haida Ikeda played in the success of the girls’ program, and the combined team.
With no seniors in last year’s run to the title, the girls aren’t rebuilding or even reloading. They are bolstering.
In 2025, the challenge with the girls’ team was to name the seven varsity runners for the District 5 meet and the state championships a week later. With a strong crew of enough runners to enter two teams in Pasco, if the rules would have allowed for such, Daily’s post-race calculations based on runners’ season-best times revealed that, hypothetically, Liberty Bell’s seven-member JV squad would have placed 12th in that 16-team race.
The point of the drill being that the Mountain Lion girls have so many good quality runners, deciding who gets those varsity spots in Pasco is, again, going to be determined on the course and late in the season.
With all five of the scoring runners in the top 30 at state 2025 and returning this year, enter freshman Karen Brewer, who should make the transition from middle school 1.5-mile races to the 5-kilometer high school race fairly quickly. Brewer, the younger sister of boys’ team member Holden Brewer (junior), broke Novie McCabe’s 10-year-old Liberty Bell middle school track and field record in the 1,600M several times. She was undefeated in her eighth-grade year of cross country and placed no lower than fourth in all but one race during her sixth- and seventh-grade years of middle school.
Missing from the lineup this year is senior Alida Burt, who was Liberty Bell’s No. 7 at state in 2025. This year she will be focusing on her Nordic training regimen and has decided to step away.
Venable captains again
Senior Ingrid Venable will captain the girls for the third consecutive year. It is her fifth year in the varsity program. She and Burt ran varsity as eighth-graders just so the Mountain Lions would have the requisite five runners for a scoring team. That choice helped extend the Mountain Lion streak of state team appearances, which currently sits at 10, and should extend to 11 this year.
Rarely is a sophomore chosen to captain a varsity squad in high school, but coaches and team members noticed her leadership qualities early on in her career.
“Ingrid is just a workhorse,” said Daily. “She works hard in practice, leads by her example and has been like that ever since junior high school. The team sees that and respects her for that.”
Handicapping the girls for 2026 team begins with the top three from last year. Junior Alice Esmiol was the top Lion in her first run at Pasco last year. Sophomore Lena DeCuir and Venable were both right with Esmiol most of the way, before her final dash in the last 500 meters.
With Brewer’s undefeated season in middle school XC, and her record-setting season on the track in the spring, she must be included in the discussion.
“It’s the No. 4-7 runners that are most important in the team race,” explained Daily. “That’s where the points can really pile up.” The Mountain Lion advantage comes in that grouping, which can make choices challenging.
“Yeah, it’s hard, but a good place to be in,” said Agnor. “Many of the schools at the B level don’t have full teams and we have 16 girls this year. That gives us a bit of an advantage.”
At state, Liberty Bell’s top five had the smallest interval (1:54) from top to bottom in the field, usually a winning statistic in cross country. The gaps were about 20 seconds between top Liberty Bell runner Esmiol and No. 2 Decuir. Venable was just two seconds and one spot behind Decuir. Thirty seconds behind them was the second wave of Sisu Clark and Maren Sands, two seconds apart, all five scoring runners in the top quarter of the field. Nina Halpin and then Burt followed about another 30 seconds back and well withing the top half of the field.
Several more runners expected to push for the No. 5-7 varsity spots, including juniors Elsa Gutzler and Ava Burrington, and sophomores Zoie Dubowy and Tova Slostad.
The potential is certainly there for a repeat performance, but there are several girls’ B programs around Washington that took notice last year and will be working to knock the Mountain Lions off the podium.
One team deserving a serious look is Pope John Paul II of the Lacey-Olympia-Tumwater area, who are regulars at the top. Rainier, Chewelah and Asotin also should reappear as top teams this year. The Mountain Lions and Pope John Paul will match up at the Nike Twilight in Everett on Saturday, Oct. 3, in the “Small School” division consisting of schools at the Washington 1B through 2A levels.
Locally, Manson is led by the defending B individual champion Grace Walsh. Walsh is the favorite to repeat as CWB league and District 5. If she can repeat this year, Walsh could set herself up to be only the third B girl to win three titles next year. Oroville’s Sierra Spieker (2010, ’12 and ’13) and Liberty Bell’s Novie McCabe (2016, ’17 and ’18) are the other two.
In pre-season lists on Athletic.net, Lake Roosevelt/Nespelem, Garden City Academy, and Okanogan all have full teams listed. In the EWAC, Mabton and Highland are the only schools listed with full girls’ teams.
Currently, three teams from District 5 will qualify for state if those numbers hold through the first half of the season. State allocations are reviewed and can be revised up or down depending on how many athletes or teams are eligible to qualify.
This is how it could shake out for the girls in the CWB: No. 1, Liberty Bell; No. 2, Manson; No. 3, Garden City; No. 4, Okanogan; and No. 5, Lake Roosevelt-Nespelem. If the District5 state allocation for girls remains at three teams, expect Liberty Bell to grab the top spot qualifying for state, Manson to place and the EWAC’s Mabton Vikings to show.
‘Harriet’ healed
WIAA awards the winning school possession of the state championship trophy for the year after a team earns the win. The 2026 championship trophy for the girls, “Harriet” by name, came to Camp Liberty Bell at Pasco in pieces, an amputated arm and leg gracing the stand, from its stay at 2024 champion Rainier High School in the Olympia area.
Nobody seems to know the full story on the injurious events, but Harriet was sent off, from Liberty Bell to trophy hospital and returned, body parts reattached, and is currently on display in satisfactory condition.
The name Harriet comes from a traditional term identifying cross country runners as “harriers,” a word coined in England during the mid-1800s. So-named for their ability to pace and run long distances with deliberate patience, like a hound after a hare, cross country runners began naming their running clubs and teams after that defining characteristic, evolving into the single word descriptor.
Runners, take your mark
The Mountain Lions open defense of their State B title on Saturday, Sept. 19, at Sehome High School Bellingham in the NW Gear Up, a break-in 2-mile warm up, and hit the 5K circuit the following Saturday, Sept. 25,in the Wenatchee Invite at Walla Walla Point Park. The home meet will be Oct. 24 for the league championships.
