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Poplar Bluff's Deaton returns to state meet for third time, McCormack to make debut
With the exception of one race this fall, Jaden Deaton has been running by himself.
The Poplar Bluff senior won seven of the eight races he competed in by an average of 28 seconds, often sprinting away from the start and setting his own pace.
That will change Saturday at the MSHSAA Class 5 championship meet at Gans Creek Cross Country Course in Columbia.
“I kind of do have a lot of pressure on myself naturally, but I just got to think about it’s just one race out of many other races,” Deaton said. “I’ve ran pretty good throughout the year so hopefully my performance is good on Saturday, but it doesn’t really matter in the greater scheme of things.”
Sarah McCormack will be making her first appearance at state after taking the last qualifying spot in the District 1 race by one-tenth of a second.
“Really exciting,” McCormack said. “I didn’t expect it.”
McCormack is the first Poplar Bluff female runner to qualify in five years and the first junior since Renee Sample in 1991.
Running the same course as the district meet on Sept. 25, McCormack finished in 25 minutes, 20 seconds. She placed 15th at the conference meet on a different course at 21:36.
Prior to the trip to Arnold on Saturday, Mules coach Beth Muse pulled McCormack aside to tell her she had a shot at advancing to state based on the times from throughout the season.
“That made me feel like I could maybe do it,” said McCormack, who finished the 5,000-meter course in 21:16.
With only the top 15 individual runners advancing, McCormack said she knew running the race that she was somewhere in the teens with people yelling out anywhere from 11 to 17.
Over the final stretch of the race she was in a group of three runners fighting for the final two spots.
McCormack said her goal for Saturday is breaking 21 minutes for the first time.
“This is the best I’ve ever done in my cross country career,” said McCormack who has always enjoyed running and joined the team in seventh grade.
Deaton joined six other Mules who have qualified for state three times and looks to improve on his showing from last year when he placed 22nd in 15:57.
He already defended his district title, winning by 18 seconds in 16:17 on Saturday.
Arnold City Park was the location of the only race Deaton didn’t win this fall. He finished seventh at the Ed White Warrior Invite on Sept. 25 with a time of 16:54. The meet was one of the few that featured runners from outside Southeast Missouri.
Poplar Bluff’s schedule was limited due to COVID-19 restrictions.
“It’s been pretty much just me by myself because we haven’t gone to big races,” Deaton said. “It will be a different feeling for sure.”
There were also races in which teams started in waves instead of everyone lining up together as they will at state when about 150 runners run the course.
“Just keep my head down, stay in the top pack as long as I can,” Deaton said.
This season he set the pace.
Deaton won the senior race at the Jackson Invitational by 41 seconds, then took the Arcadia Valley Invitational by 23 seconds with a few wrong turns along the way. His time was a minute better than the winner of the Class 3 District 1 this past weekend.
A 33-second win at Cape Central set a course record at 15:53.88 while he won the SEMO North Conference meet on the same course by 30 seconds at 16:10.
He won at Potosi by 12 seconds over Jefferson City’s Thomas Roehl, who won the District 5 race Saturday and earned a 39-second win at the Dexter Invitational.
Deaton’s district time was among the top 10 fastest in the state but each of the eight districts around Missouri were run on courses of different degrees of difficulty.
“It’s kind of weird because I was really looking forward to going to St. Louis and other places just to see those guys,” Deaton said. “I’ve seen them before so I know what they can do.”