Competing in the Joe Vigil Open in Alamosa on Sept. 7, members of the Mancos High School boys and girls cross-country teams held their own while gaining valuable experience that figures to serve them well as they move through their prep seasons.
Leading the way for the Bluejays in a highly competitive boys race that featured 376 high school runners was sophomore Edgar Hernandez, whose time of 18:19.80 was good enough for 65th place overall.
Trailing behind Hernandez and finishing with a time of 19:29.80 was sophomore Connor Sehnert, who placed 137th overall. Senior John Lund placed 137th with a time of 19:33.20, and sophomore Vanfasai Jaijong crossed the line in 296th place at 23:06.50.
“The race was pretty large, and the course bottlenecked in a few places, making it hard for the runners to really run their races at times,” Mancos head coach Brady Archer said. “With that being said, almost all of our runners ran season-best times.”
In the girls varsity race, Mancos was led by junior Grace Manning, who continued a trend of seasonlong improvement and finished 83rd with a time of 22:29.90. Junior Kaysi Thomas placed 176th (25:07.40), freshman Madilynn Ritter finished 211th (26:24.10) and junior Kylie Guile crossed the line in 245th place (28:37.00).
Sophomore Aspen Bumgarner rounded out the Mancos varsity competitors with a 267th place finish (30:36.90) in the girls varsity race, which featured 284 competitors. Mancos finished 23rd overall in the team standings.
“The (Joe Vigil Open) is the type of race that helps us later in the season as we prepare for Regionals,” Archer said. “The rest of the way in our regular season, we will not see a race anywhere close to this size.”
Next up for both the Mancos boys team and the Mancos girls team will be the Bayfield XC Invitational on Sept. 14.
