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Zion Chapel senior cross country runner Landon Sawyer signed a college letter-of-intent with Enterprise State Community College to accept an athletic scholarship last week.

Sawyer has run in the state cross country meet four times during his ZCHS career, including this past season. He ran his career best time of 18:57.47 at the Class 1A-2A State Meet, finishing 68th overall out of 161 runners. Sawyer chose to sign with ESCC to start his college career, where he will be reunited with a former teammate.

“I liked everything they had to offer,” Sawyer said of ESCC. “One of my old teammates, Cole (Charles), is running there. He’s only told me positive things about it. It felt like it was home.”

Sawyer is excited to get started in his college career.

“I just want to be someone (the coaches) can rely on and be consistent with my running,” Sawyer said. “I’ve never run 8Ks or 10Ks like they do in college. So, once I get up there and realize where I’m at, I’ll be ready.”

Last year, Charles became the first ZCHS runner to ever sign a cross country scholarship and now, Sawyer, was the second to do so. Sawyer said he believes this is a trend that will continue.

“I feel like with me and Cole signing these past two years it’s kind of led the way for others,” said Sawyer. “We have a couple of good young runners now. Alex Moseley is a junior and I think he’ll be one of the best runners to ever come through here. We have a couple of younger runners coming up, too, where people are really going to start taking notice of Zion Chapel’s athletes.”