The 2024 Cross Country season kicked into gear for the North Cougars on Wednesday evening. North headed to Andy Brown West to run in the Coppell West Invitational to start their season. And as a group, the Cougars got off to a FAST start!

In the 8th grade girls race, Jaehee Lee led the Cougars around the course finishing in 2nd place overall. She was joined by several others including Laurel Storey-3rd, Finleigh Sanders-Burk- 5th, Charlotte Beade-6th, and Sophia Sarmiento-8th in what ended up being a very dominant performance. These ladies picked right back up from their championship form from a year ago!

The 8th grade boys looked to build upon their performance from last year as well. And nobody was stronger than Vihaan Sahni who led the race from start to finish to earn the meet championship in a time of 11:18! Other Cougars who were on the prowl included Vihaan Sharma- 4th, Tomas Morales-16th, and Emiliano Noyola Garcia- 17th as North came out hungry and looks to grow stronger each week.

The 7th grade ladies took to the course for the first time as middle school runners and their excitement showed from the start! Angie Nguyen ran with gusto to finish in 2nd place overall, with a host of other Cougars filling up the top 16: Brooke Webb- 7th, Holiday Lora- 12th, Milleena Garcia- 13th, Safirah Burgos-14th, Katie Li- 15th, and Adeline Mendoza- 16th. What a fantastic first race for this group!

And to end the competition, the 7th grade boys raced to wrap it all up. Oscar Martin led the Cougar attack with a 2nd place finish; followed by Mason Hotle- 5th, Austin Shelby- 9th, and Taichi Oyama-10th. On top of that, each of these runners ran sub 13 minutes in their first XC races- keep it up boys!!!

Looking ahead, the North XC program will return to action on Wednesday, October 2nd for their only out-of-town event of the season when they head to Grapevine and will run at Cross Timbers Middle School. Join in on the action to cheer for the Cougars!