The girls cross country team traveled to South Christian on 8/23 to compete at the Under the Lights Invite for the 2nd consecutive year. 14 of 20 girls on the team competed in the first event of the season. The result was a productive team effort. The team placed 13th overall, running without a few members that regularly contribute to scoring. There were 5 girls that ran their first-ever XC race of any kind, which was fun to see them have their first experience with racing a 5k. Four members of the team that ran this same invitational last season improved their time at the race this season (Lucy Hotz = 32 seconds faster, Miriam Hess = 34 seconds faster, Shelly Zimmerman = 1:10 faster, & Kendall Nester = 1:50 faster). As far as personal bests, both Miriam & Kendall ran the fastest times of their high school careers on Friday night. This times landed on the sophomore top 50 list as #32 (Kendall) & #46 (Miriam). There were medals awarded to the top 50 finishers and Addy Nesbitt (36th) & Kendall (41st) received those. In her first high school 5k, Addy ran the fastest debut of any Cedar Springs freshman girl since 2011 (Kenzie Weiler, 18:13). That time puts her as the #18 freshman all-time list currently. There are no meets this week for the team, so the focus will be on training for the next 2 weeks until they travel to the Bath Invitational for the first time on September 7th.