The Varsity and JV Trailblazer XC squads headed to Lawrence in the pre-dawn hours on Saturday to compete at the largest meet in the midwestern US at KU’s historic Rimrock Farm XC Course. There were 8 States, 312 teams, and over 3100 runners in 8 different races, and our Blazers performed well.In the JV Girls Crimson Division, the girls had their best JV performance ever since moving to 6Awith a 6th place finish out of 20 teams. The JV girls averaged a 23:34 5K time across their top 7 runners with Junior Caroline Clarke leading the way with an overall 28th finish out of 195 runners at a course PR time of 23:15.

The JV Boys competed in the Crimson Division and showed the depth of the GE Boys XC team by placing 2nd overall out of 36 teams falling only to Akeny, Iowa who won the race as a team. The JV boys averaged an 18:11 5K among their top 7 runnes and put 4/5 runners in the Top 10 finishers out of a total of 304 runners…a truly impressive performance. Junior Gilan Brown and Senior Ken Morgan lead the way for the Trailblazers both finishing the race at 17:42 and 17:47 respectively. A huge shout out to Freshman Cooper Peyton who made up 25 places in the final 1.5 miles to finish Varsity girls were lead by Senior Sarah Farrens who not only fell in a muddy area of the course but got up, regained her place back to lead the Varsity girls to a 12th/32 team finish as she crossed the line as the 45th runner/257 runners. Sarahs time of 21:23 was a course PR for her at Rimrock… she was closely followed by Junior Bella Meili who ran a 21:44. The Blazer girls team was collectively helped by a Freshmen trio of runners running for the first time at Rimrock lead by Makayla Cox who placed 3rd overall for the Blazers and ran a 22:02.

The Varsity boys continued to show their strength as a team by competing in the elite Gold Division against the best and largest schools in the MidWest— with 5 States represented in this race, the boys saw the Junior pair Parker Walion and Nick Kilonzo lead the way to help the Blazer Boys place 13th/25 teams. There average time of 17:05 would have propelled them to a Top 3 finish in the Crimson Division as a team.! Walion placed 15th overall with a time of 16:15.9 a course PR and Kilonzo competing for the first time at Rimrock ran a career PR of 17:08! Most impressive was the pack performance with! 4 Blazer runners all crossing the line together between 17:20 and 17:24.

This race gave a lot of teams a solid mid-season preview. All 3 of the boys and girls teams will head to Missouri for another out of State Large Race at the Kansas City XC Classic at Ray-Pec. Wish them well as they continue to work to improve!