Athletes with diverse backgrounds propel Lone Peak girls cross country to another 6A title
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- Lone Peak junior Andie Aagard crosses the finish line first during the 2022 6A girls state cross country race at the Regional Athletic Complex in Salt Lake City on Tuesday, Oct. 25, 2022.
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- Lone Peak runners pose for a photo with the title trophy after the 2022 6A girls state cross country race at the Regional Athletic Complex in Salt Lake City on Tuesday, Oct. 25, 2022.
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- Lone Peak junior Addie Meldrum runs during the 2022 6A girls state cross country race at the Regional Athletic Complex in Salt Lake City on Tuesday, Oct. 25, 2022.
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- Lone Peak junior Andie Aagard (far left), American Fork junior Avalon Mecham (second from right) and Westlake senior Shelby Jensen (right) run with the lead pack during the 2022 6A girls state cross country race at the Regional Athletic Complex in Salt Lake City on Tuesday, Oct. 25, 2022.
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- Lone Peak junior Andie Aagard runs during the 2022 6A girls state cross country race at the Regional Athletic Complex in Salt Lake City on Tuesday, Oct. 25, 2022.
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- Lone Peak runners celebrate after the 2022 6A girls state cross country race at the Regional Athletic Complex in Salt Lake City on Tuesday, Oct. 25, 2022.
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- Runners from American Fork, Lone Peak and Westlake run in a group during the 2022 6A girls state cross country race at the Regional Athletic Complex in Salt Lake City on Tuesday, Oct. 25, 2022.
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- Runners leave the starting line during the 2022 6A girls state cross country race at the Regional Athletic Complex in Salt Lake City on Tuesday, Oct. 25, 2022.
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- Lone Peak runners celebrate after the 2022 6A girls state cross country race at the Regional Athletic Complex in Salt Lake City on Tuesday, Oct. 25, 2022.
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- Runners leave the starting line during the 2022 6A girls state cross country race at the Regional Athletic Complex in Salt Lake City on Tuesday, Oct. 25, 2022.
Last week was a busy time for Lone Peak juniors Addie Meldrum and Andie Aagard.
Meldrum was a defender on the top-seeded Knight girls soccer team and had to deal with the emotional heartbreak of losing for the only time in 2022 in the 6A semifinals on Oct. 18.
Aagard spent more than 75 minutes on Saturday powering through 40-mile-per-hour winds in St. George at the state club mountain biking championships (which she won).
Oh, and both also had to try to get ready for Tuesday’s 6A girls state cross country race, which took place at the Regional Athletic Complex in Salt Lake City.
The duo of Knight competitors proved just how elite they are, stepping smoothly into their roles on the Lone Peak cross country team and powering the Knights to their third title in four years.
“My No. 1 and No. 2 runner are both multi-sport athletes,” Lone Peak head coach Courtney Meldrum said. “This whole year we’ve only had the chance to race them together one time, just because there are other sports that they’ve been doing. Running isn’t for the faint of heart. You’ve got to want to do this. This year we had quite a few freshmen, so this was the time for these multi-sport athletes to come in and lead the pack.”
Aagard has been an elite mountain biker for quite a while but just this year decided to see how she could do in cross country.
“I decided to do cross country because I don’t really have a lot of competition in high school mountain biking,” Aagard said. “I joined the team and it has been such a blast. They are so nice. Mountain biking is more of an individual sport. Cross country is more being with other girls and running as a team. It’s just so fun.”
She feels like her training for her other sport made cross country more manageable.
“Running races is a lot different than biking,” Aagard said. “I feel more confident about making moves when running. I think that is because it is a shorter race. I’m used to hour-long races. When I’m running, I feel like I can hold it because it’s only like five minutes more. I find that mountain bike races are a lot more mentally tough”
Courtney Meldrum said that adding Aagard to the team pushed everyone to be better.
“You raise the bar when you get an athlete like that and it takes everyone with them,” the Lone Peak head coach said. “Everyone behind a top athlete believes they can achieve and that’s what happened today.”
The Knight junior had only raced three times in 2022 but came in fully prepared. She knew the plan and followed it perfectly.
“I was just waiting for my coach to tell me to go,” Aagard said. “He told me to go at about a mile left, if I felt good. I just tried to focus on keeping running.”
When Aagard took off, no one could keep up and she powered away from the field to come in first. She finished in a time of 17:26.6, which was 21 seconds faster than American Fork junior Avalon Mecham, who came in second.
Westlake senior Shelby Jensen crossed the finish line in third and then Addie Meldrum — who ran most of the race with blood on her face from a bloody nose — edged Layton senior Hailey Low for the No. 4 spot.
“Addie is a fighter,” Courtney Meldrum said of her daughter. “That’s just her style. She is like Andie. They are competitors who will do whatever they can to win.”
While the two Lone Peak juniors had the top finishes, the rest of their young, talented teammates weren’t far behind.
Knight freshman Anna Bybee was sixth and sophomore Boston Bybee was seventh, while freshman Brielle Nilsson edged freshman Zoey Nilsson for 10th by 0.02 seconds.
Those performances were plenty to give Lone Peak the team title, putting them 27 points in front of second-place American Fork.
“They knew the plan,” Courtney Meldrum said. “They practiced this so they know what they are doing in that pack. And they believe in each other. There is strength in numbers and that is what we’ve taught them. They always say that they only have one mile to run on their own. They run two miles as a pack and one mile on their own. They did even better today. They did great.”
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