ARLINGTON — About an hour before the District 1 3A Boys Cross Country Championship race at Lakewood High School on Oct. 31, a runner caught up to his teammates watching the end of the 3A Girls race inside the stadium.

“Guys, Eli’s not running today,” he told them excitedly, referring to Shorewood senior Eli Graves, who won the Wesco 3A Championship the week before.

The runners, racing for another area school, lamented that Shorewood likely would still place among the top four teams that advance to the State Championships in Pasco the following week, but the last-minute scratch of the race favorite would create a seismic shift in the results.

However, the reports of Graves’ absence were greatly exaggerated.

It was a close call — Graves considered holding out after dealing with knee issues the previous few days — but he ultimately felt good enough to take his place on the starting line. By the time he crossed the finish, no one was in his zip code.

With a 15:03.8 finish, Graves claimed the individual district title while leading the Stormrays (55 points) to the team crown over Edmonds-Woodway (80), Mountlake Terrace (93) and Shorecrest (104).

“I was hurting a bit, so I didn’t know if I was going to run until about an hour before,” Graves said. “It turned out good, so I was just trying to stay relaxed and just push and run my own race.”

Added sophomore teammate Kellan Roberts, who finished second at 15:29.3: “We were pretty confident as a team that we’d still do pretty strong (without Graves), but I knew if he wasn’t feeling good, then I needed to step up and take his place. I was just ready to take his spot if he dropped out.”

The plan was to show up on race day and see how he felt. Shorewood coach Joel Reese said that Graves worked on some stretches with another member of the coaching staff the day before, and after going through drills and warmups on Saturday, he felt good to go.

In fact, good enough to break the meet record set by Redmond’s Zach Leader (15:04.3) in 2024.

“Eli always brings it,” Reese said. “We know he’s going to come prepared. He’s really strong mentally, and every time that he puts himself at the line, I know that I’m going to get a great effort. And so the fact that he was confident, we were confident that he was going to perform the way he always has been, and (he) really showed up today.”

Graves said his stomach “felt pretty bad” during the race, and that his legs didn’t feel the best given the issues he was dealing with. After all, he did run about 27 seconds slower — ‘slow’ is very much a relative term in this case — than his 14:36.9 finish at the Nike Hole in the Wall XC Invitational on the same course just three weeks earlier. However, Graves feels confident that he’ll be in a better place physically for the State Championships, where the Stormrays will have high hopes.

Shorewood placed second behind Mercer Island in last year’s State Championships, and Graves finished 20th overall at 16:00.4. This year, coming off a district performance where Graves and Roberts went 1-2 while the rest of the seven finished in the top 35, the Stormrays hope to take a step further.

“I think seeing what we were able to do last year, it really motivated us all to really put some really good work in, even last winter and this summer,” Graves said. “So I feel like we knew we had a lot of returners, and that we had a really good shot this year.”

Rather than applying any kind of significant change to his training over the offseason, Graves credits consistency and staying healthy as the main factors to his improvement over the past year. Following last fall’s cross country season, he picked up third place in both the 1600 and 3200 at the State Track & Field Championships in late May.

This cross country season, Graves has won eight of the nine races he’s competed in. The lone exception was a fifth-place finish in the Nike Bob Firman Invitational on Sept. 26, when he set his current personal record of 14:36 amid a loaded field.

Graves will aim to make it nine wins out of 10 races on Saturday, and with strong performances from his teammates behind him, it could lead to a team title as well.

“We’ve all been working as hard as we can,” Graves said. “Everybody here, they’re ready to rip.”