Over the past couple of weeks I’ve noticed a number of newly-shaved heads in the hallways. Normally I wouldn’t look twice, but it’s now almost a month after freshman head-shaving day, and some of these shaved heads belonged to respectable upperclassmen. Something was wrong. Confused, I decided to investigate further, and discovered the unthinkable; for the first time since 1995, the entire Garfield Boys Cross Country Team was going to state.

To understand the true implications of this statement, it should be pointed out that the team has not been quite so stellar in recent years. Two years ago, Ms. Dowell led this young squad to a second to last place finish in their conference. Last year, only three runners from the entire team moved on from districts. This year then, the young men of the squad made a solemn vow to each other that they would all shave their heads if they made it as a team. A third-place finish at the District Championships later, and the head shaving commenced. Senior Anna Dailey also qualified easily from the girls’ side, although she decided against shaving her head.

A few weeks later the Bulldogs walked away from the State Championships in Pasco with quite a few good results;

The entire boy’s team placed 12th overall out of the entire state. This is especially satisfying knowing that not a single other inner-city Seattle team even made it to the State Championships.

Junior Chris Wozniak and senior Michael Cunetta placed 32nd and 40th place respectively. Even more importantly, by class, Wozniak came in 10th, fellow junior Filmon Tekeste came in 25th, and Cunetta came in 26th among seniors. Ryan Peterson also came in 21st among sophomores.

Senior Anna Dailey absolutely killed the competition. In a race that often comes down to fractions of a second, Dailey won 1st place in the entire 4A girls division by a good 19 seconds. She was also the only girls runner in the entire state to run the 5K in under 18 minutes, claiming the Seattle Times KingCo 4A player of the week. To put it bluntly, she completely and utterly destroyed every other girl in the entire state, as well as killing their families and bearing Usain Bolt’s lovechild. (some facts may be exaggerated)

All in all, this was a highly successful showing from this often under-applauded Garfield team. May next year bring as many shaved heads as this one.