LAKEWOOD — The Cougars cross country teams tend to have one thing in common: performing their best at the end of the season.

While that may not have been case at the Cascade Conference meet Oct. 23, the Cougars will still move on.

Lakewood, who played host at the meet, earned a pair of third-place finishes, but coach Jeff Sowards thinks there is more potential on this team.

“We could have run faster today,” he said. “It wasn’t our best day — there was nothing to it, it’s just one of those things.”

The Cougar boys finished with 63 points and the girls with 76.

Lakewood posted a number of top 10 finishes, including Chelsea Stokes (19:43.67) and Rachel Cundy (19:55.94), who finished second and third, respectively.

On the boys’ side, senior Trent Tresch led a trio of Cougar runners with his third-place finishing time of 15:51.59. He was trailed by juniors Kris Mugrage (17:00.48), who finished sixth and Avery Jensen (17:02.79), who finished in seventh place.

Both teams will head to South Whidbey for the Class 2A District 1 meet held Oct. 30. There they boys will try to be the 27th consecutive Cougar team to qualify for the state meet. They’ll have to place at least fourth to do so.

In the Class 4A races, Arlington finished sixth (153 points) in the girls and seventh (178 points) in the boys, qualifying both teams for the district meet, which is also at South Whidbey on Oct. 30.

Top finishers on each team were senior James Clark for the boys, who was No. 15 with a time of 17:07.43 and sophomore C.J. Taylor for the girls, who finished the 3.1-mile race in 20:43.02.