PREP CROSS COUNTRY: Auburn High hosts Tiger Classic on Saturday

At the beginning of this cross country season, the gap between the first finisher and the fifth — the last scoring spot on varsity — for Auburn High’s girls was close to 5 minutes.

As the year’s gone on, the Tigers have shaved that down to 2.

Coach Kay Dee Calloway said the margin could still stand to be lower before the section and state meets. And running against Bob Jones this Saturday might just help speed up the process.

“We want to run close together as a group, decrease that 1-to-5 split a lot,” Calloway said. “Bob Jones will push us. It’s nice to get some competition on your home course.”

Bob Jones is just one of the 24 schools descending on Kiesel Park on Saturday morning for the Tiger Classic.

Auburn boys coach Dan Norton said more than 500 athletes are expected to compete in the four different races — varsity and junior high boys and girls — with 235 alone entered in the varsity boys race.

“This is the largest it’s ever been,” said Norton, who estimated the school has been hosting the event for 12 years.

Auburn’s girls, ranked No. 2 in the state in Class 6A, won’t see top-ranked Mountain Brook in person until the state meet in Moulton on Nov. 14.

The No. 3 Patriots will just have to do for now.

“It’ll give us a chance to see what Bob Jones has,” Calloway said. “It’ll give us an opportunity to go head-to-head and see where we stand. This weekend is a good chance for us to run in a comfortable place and see how fast we can run.”

Two sophomore twins, Christine and Amanda Patterson, have been pacing the Tigers for most of the season, with senior Courtney Ruggles not far behind.

Calloway said the Pattersons, who moved in from Arizona this year when their father got a job at the university, run in the 19-minute range for a 5K with Ruggles running in the low 20s.

The Tigers’ boys have bounced back from the graduation of Patrick Gomez, Howard Graves and Matt Smith — all of whom signed to run at Division I schools — and are currently ranked fifth in the state.

Auburn has won every meet it’s entered except the Jesse Owens Classic on Oct. 3, in which the Tigers finished third in their division but were the top team from Alabama.

Norton said seniors Jason Miller, Mark McDonald and Michael Waldrop have led the way for the team, running around 17 minutes.

But it gets hard to tell them apart: the Tigers’ 1-to-5 gap has been as small as 12 seconds this season.

“Now if we can run about 30 seconds faster, we’ll be great,” Norton said.

Norton said the team’s goal for this week is to duplicate its performance from the Smiths Station Panther Invite last Saturday, in which the Tigers won by a comfortable 35-point margin and averaged 17:11.99 from their scoring runners.

“We want to keep improving timewise on what we consider is a more difficult course,” Norton said. “We’re trying to learn to race our own race and not letting anyone else dictate our race.”

The junior high girls race starts at 8 a.m. Saturday, with the junior high boys following at 8:30, the varsity girls at 9 and the varsity boys at 9:30.

Other ranked teams that will be running include: Enterprise (No. 10 6A girls), LAMP (No. 4 4A girls and boys), Lawrence County (No. 1 4A boys and No. 3 girls), Montgomery Academy (No. 1 3A girls and No. 2 boys), Montgomery Catholic (No. 7 3A boys and No. 4 girls), St. James (No. 10 3A boys) and TR Miller (No. 3 3A girls and No. 8 boys).

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