Shawnee-Area 6th Grader Wins State Cross Country Title After Losing Shoe
Most runners would call losing a shoe at the starting line a race-ending problem. But Kamryn Hobia, a 6th grader at Pleasant Grove Public School, treated it like a minor detail.
On Saturday, October 3rd in Shawnee, Oklahoma, Kamryn won the ORES Division II Girls State XC Meet, finishing as the fastest in the state in her division. And she did it on a rainy day, after losing a shoe right at the start of the race.
Cross country is a sport built on grit. Races are long, and there's nowhere to hide when conditions turn bad. Add drizzle to the course and a missing shoe at the gun, and plenty of runners would have had every excuse to ease off. Kamryn didn't. She kept running and crossed the line as the state champion, beating out 59 other runners with a time of 9:46.18.
Congratulations, Kamryn. Pottawatomie County is proud to call the fastest in the state one of our own. And that muddy sock is going down in history.
