Isa Marshall paced her Denver East teammates to the team title at the Wash Park Invitational with a third-place finish. Colorado Track XC file photo by Alan Versaw.
In the grand scheme of things, neither title will go down as one of the season's biggest, but Denver East's and Brighton's girls posted early wins at the Wash Park Invitational, and that it is the sort of thing that can point your entire season in the right direction.
Denver North's Samantha Skeen posted the win for the individual girls, but her teammates were not nearly close enough around her to translate that into a team title. Neither did the team title accompany second place, but Platte Canyon has to be kind of excited about the debut performance of freshman Madelynn Gerritsen. At 13:06, Gerritsen was only six seconds off Skeen's winning time, and it's been a while since Platte Canyon has be haunting the steps of girls race winners.
Perhaps a new era in Platte Canyon cross country is upon us? A fourth-place team finish here could be interpreted to suggest that possibility.
For this one evening, though, the team title went Denver East's direction, led by the third-place efforts of Isa Marshall. Denver South nearly snatched that away with a 4-5-6 from Sophia Clark, Esmerelda Baltierra, and Nicole Oberlag, but cross country is about scoring five.
Denver East did manage to get two more into the top ten in Rhianna Herd and Emily Turner, but it was ultimately a much smaller 4-5 gap for East than South that would spell the difference.
East also got off to a great start in the boys race, with Harrison Scudamore running for a 25-second win in 10:53. West's Gubay Ali took second. But, as it was with the girls race later in the afternoon, first and second wouldn't hold the key to the team title for the boys.
The team title would be decided by a 10-second pack time for Brighton, scoring 8-10-11-12-13. Kaleb Taylor got things going for the Bulldogs with an 11:51. When Tyler Zirker crossed at 12:01, Brighton's scoring was done before anyone else had even as many as three across the line. Brighton wasn't done yet, though. Marcus Kern, Brighton's #6, crossed next in 12:02. Call that insurance.
East would eventually take second, with a solid performance from some Platte Canyon seniors handing third to the Huskies.
Mancos and Dolores were also competing on Wednesday afternoon, but results from that meet in Utah have not yet bubbled to the surface.