[email\u00a0protected]<\/a><\/p>\nLUBBOCK \u2014\u00a0If Plano East senior\u00a0Reagan Noel\u00a0were in any other region in Class 6A, she would have been a state qualifier.<\/p>\n
Noel would have placed 11th in both Region II-6A and Region III-6A, and third in Region IV-6A, earning an individual berth in the Class 6A state meet in any of those three regions.<\/p>\n
However, Region I-6A proved to be a different beast. For as hard as Noel tried to earn her first state appearance, she came up just eight seconds short of qualifying. The Plano East senior settled for 21st place with a time of\u00a018:43\u00a0at Mae Simmons Park on\u00a0Oct. 21. The cutoff time for earning a top-10 individual finish from a nonqualifying team was\u00a018:35.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe beat multiple individual state qualifiers from other regions that we saw this season,\u201d head coach\u00a0Robert Reed\u00a0said. \u201cShe raced exactly how I told her to. Lubbock is a tough course at altitude and can eat you alive if you don\u2019t have a plan.\u201d<\/p>\n
Noel was in 42nd place one mile into the race but improved to 30th at the two-mile mark before finishing 21st \u2014 all while finishing ahead of several runners she had not previously beaten this season.<\/p>\n
\u201cTwenty-first is good enough to make it as an individual qualifier most years, and I told her that if she wants to put the blame on anyone, it should be me for not telling her to get out faster,\u201d Reed said.<\/p>\n
Noel was one of seven Lady Panthers to compete in the regional meet, with several runners achieving a personal best or coming close.<\/p>\n
Junior\u00a0Meena Mulford\u00a0ran a PR, placing 38th in\u00a019:20.\u00a0Brooke Tierney, also a junior, was one second off her season-best time, finishing 65th in\u00a019:57.<\/p>\n
Senior\u00a0Dyan Tecuatl\u00a0took 91st with a\u00a020:29\u00a0in the final race of her high school cross-country career.\u00a0Kate Salyer, a junior, stepped up her efforts to be Plano East\u2019s fifth-fastest runner, placing 97th in\u00a020:34. Senior\u00a0Alina Nguyen\u00a0was 98th in\u00a020:38.2, followed by sophomore\u00a0Louisa Christensen, who placed 99th in\u00a020:38.3.<\/p>\n
Fresh off winning its first district championship since 2017 via tiebreaker over Prosper, Plano East hoped to carry that success to Lubbock.<\/p>\n
Although the Lady Panthers fell short of earning a team berth, Plano East had one of its best showings at a regional meet in program history. Reed said he had his team tied for 11th going into the meet based on initial projections and a score of 335 points, and every runner beat her projected place as the Lady Panthers finished ninth with\u00a0253 points\u00a0\u2014 just one point out of eighth and three out of seventh.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn my 11th season as the girls coach, this season will be one that I will reminisce on for the rest of my career,\u201d Reed said. \u201cThere were so many lessons and takeaways that put us in the position to compete, and the girls bought in and ultimately believed in what we were trying to do.\u201d<\/p>\n
Freshman\u00a0Levi Rowe\u00a0placed 99th in the boys race with a time of\u00a017:13, gaining valuable experience in just his first season running for the Panthers.<\/p>\n
\u201cLevi did exactly what I told him to do as well, but the race did not get out as fast as I thought it would,\u201d Reed said. \u201cWhile it was not the race we were hoping for, the experience will serve him well moving forward. He has a great head on his shoulders and is already using the experience to fuel him to keep training through Thanksgiving break and into track season.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Plano East senior Reagan Noel, pictured in previous action, placed 21st\u00a0with a time of 18:43 at the Region…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":23660,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[160,162,161],"class_list":{"0":"post-23659","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-plano","8":"tag-plano","9":"tag-plano-headlines","10":"tag-plano-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23659","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23659"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23659\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23660"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23659"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23659"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23659"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}