The Aurora schools are first out of the gate. And an interesting first meet out of the gate it was.
No lightning shortened this year's event, but that is far from suggesting that the meet was uneventful.
In our first upset of the season, a very deep Cherokee Trail team beat the Grandview girls, 30-42.
It's true that Caroline Robbins wasn't running for Grandview, but it's not clear that Grandview would have necessarily won even if she had been running.
Let's give some credit here to where credit is due: Cherokee Trail opened with a very nice effort and plugged up the top ten with Cougar singlets. Six of the race's top ten finishers belonged to Cherokee Trail, including the familiar Caitlin McConnell and the less familiar Tarikwa Woldemariam, Campbell Faust, Adeline Wilson, Jessica Brookie, and Kyra Stevenson.
This is how name recognition is earned.
Grandview could only wedge Kaitlyn Mercer, the individual title winner in 19:01, and Denika Hallin into the Cougar-crowded top ten.
So, all that likely precipitates some changing of the order when the next 5A Girls rankings comes out.
The boys played a little more according to expectations. That means Grandview took a rather convincing win on the boys side, scoring 27 points (the highest unbeatable score, by the way) to 60 for second place Overland.
And if you were inclined to quibble over whether the Overland team is actually for real this fall, that second-place finish should help to quell your quibbles. Lots of schools would have loved to finish where Overland did at this one.
Individual honors went to Eaglecrest's Mason Brown, much as expected. Brown won in 16:33. Matthew Fox led the Grandview surge in second with a 16:46.
Part of the fun of early season meets is checking for ringers in the JV races. A quick look at the JV girls results shows Cherokee Trail may be even deeper than we previously suggested. The top four JV finishes all went to CT.
Grandview was similarly dominant in the boys JV race.
And so it has begun...