The Mancos, Montezuma-Cortez and Dolores cross-country teams opened their 2016 seasons last Friday at the Loyd’s Lake Classic in Monticello.
Simon Kearns led the Jays, completing the 5K in 17:02.25 to place sixth. He was followed by Teslin Stecher (18:23.47), Jake McKie (18:29.93) and Caleb Yoder (18:45.34) in 13th, 18th and 21st place, respectively.
Ryoya Shima (19:32.59), Zane Wilson (20:04.96) and Alex Fleitz (22:48.88) rounded out the varsity boys as the team finished third.
The Mancos girls also had a strong showing in their first meet of the year. The Lady Jays were led by Emma Most (23:10.24) and Kaylee Rose (23:20.49), who finished in 25th and 26th. And with Jessalyn Bay-Voit (24:52.43) finishing 43rd, Hannah Skinner (25:12.27) in 47th and Mimi Archuleta (27:39.78) taking 59th, the team finished eighth.
Head coach Brady Archer said that many of his varsity runners finished with personal records for the course. And he was also pleased with his group of junior varsity competitors.
“We had two freshmen, Nic Baikie and Maggie Delaney, finish fifth and fourth respectively in their JV races,” said Archer. “They, along with the other JV runners, had not run in a high school race before. I just told them to finish the first one and not worry about the time or place so they both did an outstanding job.”
Baikie (19:29.09) led the JV boys with his fifth-place finish, and he was followed by Brandon Sehnert (22:58.03), Colt Spencer (25:23.97) and Griff Huver (26:35.81).
Delaney was the Lady Jays’ top finisher in the JV race, taking fourth place with a time of 23:41.43. Hakayla Snow followed in 22nd with a time of 30:12.62.
The M-CHS Lady Panthers were led by Emma Thissen, who finished 22nd with a time of 19:42.81. She was followed by Sam Bagge (24:10.40) and Regina Schuster (24:22.90) in 33rd and 36th place, respectively. And Lynda LaPaz (27:41.87) and Corinne Damore (28:30) rounded out the squad, as the team finished ninth.
Maya LaMunyon (29:32.93) and Cougar Lasueur (33:27.02) finished 19th and 34th in the JV race.
Josh Ramos highlighted the M-CHS boys, finishing in 17:48.18 and in ninth place.
Ben Castillo-Calvillo (19:42.81) was 39th, Will Brown (21:20.59) finished 63rd and Blair Rice (22:01.50) was three spots behind in 66th. And then Marcus Amrine (23:41.31) and Riley Whiteskunk (25:03.56) finished 72nd and 74th, respectively, as the team went on to place 10th.
The Dolores Bears had just three runners compete, so they were unable to score as a team.
But they still saw impressive results for a season-opener, as sophomores Phillip Hufman and Brennan Hite each neared their PRs and freshman Alex Olson completed his first race.
Hufman finished in 18:51 to take 23rd and Hite finished in 19:10.50 to place 28th. And in his first cross-country race, Olson finished in 22:46.41 to finish 70th and round out the squad.
