Four Central Oregon cross-country teams will compete in the Class 5A Special District 1 championships on Saturday, and they will be hitting the golf links in hopes of qualifying for the OSAA state championships.

Redmond High hosts the six-team district race — which includes Central Oregon’s Bend High, Mountain View and Summit, as well as Ashland and Eagle Point from Southwestern Oregon — at Eagle Crest’s Resort Course, an 18-hole golf course. The girls varsity race begins at 1 p.m. followed by the boys at 1:30 p.m. The top two teams in each race earn bids to the OSAA Class 5A state championships at Lane Community College in Eugene on Nov. 2. Any individual runners who finish in the top five also qualify for state.

The 2,500-meter course, which will be lapped twice to make it a 5K race, will start near the midpoint of the Resort Course’s 17th fairway and will incorporate the 18th and 16th holes before finishing back at the 17th.

Redmond coach Tim Gibbons and his assistant, Tim Conley (who is also the meet director), designed the course, specifically choosing the Resort Course to allow for a more spectator-friendly race, in the mold of the Oxford Classic at Drake Park in Bend earlier this month.

“That was our goal,” Gibbons says. “Running should be fun, and this is a really, really fun course.”

The track is “not real hilly,” the Panthers coach says, as runners will encounter only gradual ups and downs as they wind around and through the Resort Course’s final three holes.

Parking is available behind the team’s tents at the main lodge and at the conference center across the street from the lodge. The junior varsity girls and boys races will follow the varsity competition, and awards will be presented at 3:15 p.m.

—Bulletin staff report