And they’re off…
And what a great start by the local boys’ cross country teams on a warm and sunny Thursday afternoon in Brighton. The three local teams finished in the top seven out of 19 teams in the field at Huron Meadows Metropark in the 37th annual Early Bird Open.
Livonia Churchill had three runners cross in the top five and finished with a meet best 72 points. Pioneer was only a step behind with 95 points while White Lake Lakeland finished third with 126 points, one point better than Plymouth. Huron finished with 134 points to take fifth place while Skyline had 186 points to take seventh.
Pioneer’s Becket Crooks started the season off on the right foot. The junior finished first overall with a time of 16 minutes, 11.20 seconds, well ahead of runner-up Alex Doneth of Mason (16:29.10).
The Pioneers had two other runners crack the top 20 with Theo Sacks-Thomas in 13th place (17:04.8) and fellow junior Quinn Davis in 19th place (17:21.8). Thomas DeJesus was 26th (17:41.4), Walker Ledbetter was 36th (18:00.3), Colin Courage was 49th (18:27.0) and Max Carne was 87th (19:16.4).
Walker Brose led the River Rats across the finish line. The senior landed seventh overall with a time of 16:50.1. Fellow senior Jonah Kraft had a strong race with a 14th place finish time of 17:05.7.
Juniors Jamal Samaha was 25th (17:39.3), Francisco Dura was 32nd (17:52.8), Thomas Conley was 57th (18:36.10) and Charles Cools was 70th (18:53.4) for Huron.
The Eagles featured a couple of sophomores at the top of their lineup card. Matthew Guikema was 23rd in 17:35.10 and fellow 10th grader Nicholas Yuan was 28th in 17:44.4. Skyline had three other runners crack the top 50 with Zeke Lafferty 40th (18:07.3), Jack Robichaud 47th (18:23.7) and Gustaf Finn 50th (18:28.20). Two freshmen followed with Oskar MacArthur 58th (18:37.5) and Martin Gehrke 62nd (18:42.7).
