When mid-August and the start of high school cross country season arrives each year, you will usually find the Stratford cross country teams at the Cypress XC Relays at Spring Creek Park in Tomball. That's been the case the last several years and was the case again on Saturday on a typically hot and muggy late summer morning in the Houston area.

Rather than starting the season with a traditional 5K or two-mile race, the event provides a rare opportunity for our runners to partner with a teammate for a two-person relay competition. In the Varsity girls and boys and JV boys divisions, each team member alternates running one mile for a total of two miles each (1x1x1x1), and the JV girls team members run one mile each. With teammates and cheering fans lined along most of the hilly and wooded race course, it makes for an exciting day of competition and serves as an early barometer of fitness levels.

Our medal winners on the day were the teams of Ben Pearce/Owen Duggan and Ethan Shuck/Nathan Zoboroski.

Pearce and Duggan took home Championship medals after beating all of the 42 other teams in the Varsity Boys A division, and Shuck and Zoboroski took 10th place in the JV Boys race. In team scoring, both the Varsity and JV boys finished in fourth place.

RESULTS

Varsity Girls A Division

Niamh Collins/Amelia Bommer - 23rd (24:59)

Varsity Boys A Division

Owen Duggan/Ben Pearce - 1st (19:25)

Jake Rodriguez/Daylan Rushing - 20th (20:35)

Samuel Jordan/Jona Morford - 25th (20:56)

Eli Roberts/Jonathan Lumpkin - 34th (22:25)

JV Girls

Olivia Ceraudo/Angie Salel - 34th (14:00)

Sophie Hare/Laura Lozano - 37th (14:08)

Tara Cvetkovic/Amanda Gonzalez - 68th (16:05)

Savannah Ceraudo ran solo due to her partner withdrawing.

JV Boys

Ethan Shuck/Nathan Zoboroski - 10th (22:36)

Diego Ruiz/Jean Choi - 14th (22:54)

Bobby Carter/Braddox Overstreet - 30th (24:02)

Liam Osbon/Nathan Scott - 33rd (24:08)

Nolan Brock/Wesly Shuck - 36th (24:49)

Matthew Dial/Charles Keen - 41st (25:07)

William Ryan/Kaleb Bernat - 56th (26:16)

All of our teams will race again next Friday morning at the Clear Falls Invitational held at Hometown Heroes Park in League City. Varsity boys will kick things off at 8:00 am followed by all other divisions on a rolling schedule.