State champions at last

Finally...the end goal was reached.”

Lexington High School eighth grader Kendra Miles of the Class 5A champion girls' cross-country team.

Mentored under Bailey Harris as a boys cross-country assistant, Tanner Graham was well-schooled in Lexington High School's long tradition in the sport. 

He's now the head coach of the Lexington girls cross-country team, which made school history Nov. 10 at Sandhills Research Center in Columbia. The Lady Wildcats came away with the S.C. HIgh School League Class 5A cross-country title.

It was the program's second state championship and first in 10 years. 

"It goes back, way back even before I took over," Graham said of the school's success in cross-country. "They won the state championship in 2012. Coach Bailey Harris had the boys humming for a long time, and I was fortunate to learn from him and coach alongside him on the boys side.

"He did a great job. And then, it's just the way that the culture has become. Girls just want to come and run for Lexington. We get a lot of seventh and eighth graders every single year that come out and show up." 

One of those eighth graders, Kendra Miles, led the way with a third-place finish. For she and Graham, finishing first was a goal after back-to-back runner-up finishes.  

"I was so happy that all of our hard work paid off and that everything that we've worked to, like all the workouts and stuff, finally, like showed in a race,” said Miles, who placed second last year in her first state title event. “It showed, like, all season, but finally ... the end goal was reached.”

"It's just all the hard work they've put in," Graham said. "Last couple of years, they've been putting in the same hard work and that led us to a runners-up finish. There was just a different level of hunger this year on the team from the girls. Just each and every day, they showed up, ready to work and ready to get better and that led them ultimately to that final goal."

Entering this year's final, Graham said the Lady Wildcats took a "just another 5K" approach. Having run eight races already this year, he believed staying consistent was the difference in winning the event. 

Along with Miles, earning All-State honors for Lexignton were sophomores Lydia Metz and Laurel Wells. Both finished seventh and ninth place, respectively, while Chapin's Abigail White was fifth overall to help the Lady Eagles take fifth place. 

River Bluff girls finished 13th. 

Graham also credited Miles and team captains Captains Grace Harrell and Hannah Webster for helping strengthen the team's culture to make it attractive to young athletes "to come out and try something new." 

On the Class 5A boys side, Lexington finished seventh with Jesse Oates earning All-State honors with a 12th place finish. River Bluff was 10th, and Dutch Fork finished 16th. 

The Class 2A finals also took place in Columbia. Pelion's teams finished seventh in boys and 10th in girls, Batesburg-Leesville finished 12th in boys and Gray Collegiate finished 13th in girls. 

Classes 3A and 4A will finals Nov. 12 starting at 9 a.m. in Columbia.