K-M’s Raftis aims for PR at state cross country meet in Pasco

Published 5:00 pm Thursday, November 5, 2015

Kent-Meridian High senior Anthony Raftis says he hopes his performance at the Class 4A state cross country meet in Pasco on Saturday will be his best yet.

The 17-year-old has his eye on running in college and already has offers from a couple of schools. He said he would like to attend a school on the East Coast, where he has family.

“I want to go to a bigger school,” he said. “The state performance is going to be very important.”

Raftis wants to complete the 5-kilometer course in 15 minutes 45 seconds. His personal best is 16:09, but he is confident he can improve.

“I could do way better than that currently,” he said.

The runner is a veteran competitor at the state meet, having finished 68th last year.

“That was more getting to know the state course, getting to know the procedures and now this year it is going out and getting a really good performance,” he said.

Raftis said he spent the off-season training.

“My off-season was huge,” he said. “I hit high mileage and high intensity, which I think in past years I was more in the high mileage and this year I was able to do both intensity and the mileage.”

Raftis has run cross country and track since his freshman year.

“I am a lot better at cross country,” he said. “The longer distance is better for me. That is what I am looking forward to in college is you get to run even longer events.”

He credits his success in the sport to determination and hard work.

“My freshman, sophomore year I wasn’t that great but now I have become a pretty good runner through hard work,” he said. “Freshman year we had a guy on the team who was really fast and I thought I want to be like that and now I have gone past and surpassed that by a lot.”

Raftis said he is proud of his team’s performance this year. The boys team qualified for districts.

“It wasn’t just me. The whole team had to do good to get it,” he said. “We had a lot of PRs (personal records) at the league meet.”

Kent-Meridian placed 16th at the West Central District III 4A meet at Tacoma’s American Lake Golf Course on Saturday. Raftis took fourth place.

Rochelle Greenwell, who is in her second year as cross country coach at Kent-Meridian, said Raftis has become a leader on the team.

“He led the kids in a camp (last summer) and he planned all the works out they did, and they did fun runs,” Greenwell said. “It worked out nice. It got plenty of those that might not have ran otherwise into shape.”

Greenwell attributes the teams success this season to Raftis’ encouragement.

“Right before races I took a step back and let him handle the pep talks before the runs,” she said. “They came up with their own cheer. His guidance is what made them more tightly knit.”

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BELOW: Kent-Merdian’s boys cross county team qualified for district’s this year under the encouragement of captain and top runner Anthony Raftis. Team members included, front row left: Ghislain Bugingo, Binyam Ayele; Second row from left, Raftis, Zacharie Charboneau, Max Fredell, Jose Hernandez and Adonis Rosabal.