Boys’ team captain Orlo Parkinson returns as the only senior on the Liberty Bell roster this year.
It’s a streak of team appearances at state cross country that began in the fall of 2010 and has been uninterrupted, except by a pandemic, ever since. It’s been such a long string that current Mountain Lion Coach Liam Daily was a freshman at Liberty Bell High School when it started.
That 2010 team qualified by the skin of their teeth, beating out Lake Roosevelt by one point for the final spot in the old Central Washington regional championship to punch their ticket to state for the first time since 2001.
During that run, the boys have a championship in 2021, two second-places in 2016 and 2017, a pair of fourth-place trophies in 2022 and 2023 to go with their third-place finish last year.
Like the girls’ team, only one senior appears on the roster this year in captain Orlo Parkinson, who is coming off a summer without much of a break, running in June and July when the air quality permitted, working and traveling through Europe with a group of young musicians.
Now, it’s back to running and Parkinson sees great things ahead for the Mountain Lions this year.
“He’s been on the varsity all four years and is deeply involved in campus activities,” Daily said of Parkinson “He has a lot of fun pushing himself, and like Ingrid [Venable, the girls’ senior], the kids see that and respect it. He has that blend of taking things seriously and yet having fun with it. He gets a lot out of being around this team and putting a lot of energy into building a strong team culture.”
Along with being a two-sport athlete, Parkinson is also an officer in the Liberty Bell Key Club, a member of the National Honor Society and a regular in musical and dramatic productions of local community theater. He also performs the National Anthem at school events, sometimes solo and sometimes in duet form with an original Mountain Lion and local troubadour, Fred Cooley.
Ever the optimist, Parkinson is high on his team for this year. “I think our prospects are good, very good,” he said. “Even with the problems caused by the smoke this summer, I’m not worried. I’m fully confident we’ll be in a good place by the time state comes in November.”
Parkinson is working toward improvement this year but still having fun. His 17:59 at the league meet last year is his personal best for a 5-kilometer race, but he wants to bring that down, a lot: his goal of lopping off nearly a half minute.
Filling the slots
There are a couple of holes to fill for the boys this year, but nothing that would cause them to miss the party in Pasco for the 16th straight time. Gone are Aidan Sands to graduation, and two of this year’s anticipated seniors, Sam Kaltenbach and Liam Kiefer, both donning the pads and hitting the gridiron for football.
The junior class is the strength and heart of this team. Holden Brewer, Soren DeCuir and River Ferguson all had excellent spring seasons on the track and ran closely enough at state cross country to be considered a pack. From Decuir’s 10th-place finish in 2025 to Ferguson’s 21st-place finish was only 19 seconds off the clock, which bodes well for this year.
The wild card this year comes in the form of freshman Thorsen Yahraes. He is a rising star among the Nordic crowd and was consistently at the front of the field in middle school cross country meets as an eighth-grader last year. He’ll be ready for the task after a summer of roller skiing and running distances and should adjust to the 5K distance fairly well.
Two more members of the junior class are Crispin Anderson and Lucas Gatlin. All they did last year was get faster from start to finish and make for a hard choice when District 5 and state rolled around. Anderson was able to edge Gatlin for the top JV runner at the CW2B League championships and repeated that performance at the District 5 championships. His late season charge led to him being named to the varsity squad at state.
While Yahraes looks to be in the top five LBHS runners, perhaps even as high as No. 4, Anderson and Gatlin can be expected to battle it out for the No. 6 and 7 spots, with junior Cassius Johnson ready to run should anyone be missing from the top seven for a meet.
Coach Daily stresses that there are several key components that he and coaches Becca Agnor and Haida Ikeda will working this year to get the boys, and the girls, back to the state meet.
“Running a 5K is mostly mental,” said Daily. “Learning what it feels like to hold that pace for an entire race is a real challenge. If you are running the 5K pace, at two miles in you are not a very happy person. Learning how to turn down that nervous system response is a skill and one works on that in practice, but the best training ground is in competition.”
Brewer looks like a good bet to lead the pack back to state. At the same time, DeCuir and Ferguson just seem to keep getting faster. If that trio can run together and manage to place highly in Pasco, look out.
The Mountain Lions have become traditional entrants at the NW Gear Up in Bellingham, hosted by Sehome High School, coming on Sept. 19. One of the early races, it is run on a 2-mile course and races are segregated by grade level. It is a great warm-up for the athletes, but doesn’t provide a reliable look into what to expect.
That race will come the following Saturday, Sept. 26, at Walla Walla Point city park in Wenatchee. It’s a great spectator venue on a fairly fast track. Many of Central Washington’s B class schools will be there, providing a glimpse into both the CWB and District 5 competition.
The Mountain Lions travel over the Cascade Mountains on consecutive weekends, Oct. 3 at the Nike Twilight in Everett and another Nike event, the Hole In The Wall Invitational in Lakewood, near Smokey Point north of Everett.
The lone home meet for the Mountain Lions will be the CWB Championships on Oct. 24.
