Douglas County runners enjoyed a successful opening weekend to the cross country season, placing a number of high finishes at regional events.
Sierra Lutheran senior Wade Meddles won the Nevada Jim Vanden Heuvel Twilight Open 4K at Shadow Mountain Park in Sparks Friday with a time of 13:06, finishing 11 seconds ahead of the nearest competition.
Meddles' win helped spark the Falcon boys' varsity squad to a fifth place finish overall as Nathanael Williams took 10th with a time of 14:34, Preston Lyons was 37th at 15:31, Levi Grabow was 39th at 15:35 and Nathan Conover was 45th at 15:51.
The same afternoon, Douglas sophomore Sadie Gastelum posted the fastest girls' time of the day at the annual Lampe Park Class Races, running the 2.57-mile course in 17:31.
The class races have boys and girls of the same academic class run at the same time. Over 190 runners competed for 11 schools.
Douglas sophomore Andrew Cobourn won the sophomore race with a time of 14:50 (eighth overall).
Senior Scotty Lococo ran the fastest time of the day for the Tigers at 14:40, which was good enough for fifth place among seniors and sixth overall.
"All our runners had solid, complete races from start to finish," coach Jay Frey said. "I'm really excited to see a few groups of our runners that are going to be able to pack up and work together during our workouts and races.
"There is going to be some great competition on the team and they're going to be pushing each other on a daily basis to see who is ready to work for some legitimate results this season."
Other top performers for the Tiger boys included Jeremy Tigh (24th, 16:41), Tanner DeGiovanni (25th, 16:44), Adrian Duenas (33rd, 17:04), Mark Pieters (35th, 17:16), Kory Koskin (17:34), Josh Tigh (19:08), Nickoli Kallman (19:42) and Kevin Kendrick (23:40).
On the girls' side, sophomore Bre Chabot was 17th overall with a time of 19:21. Other runners for Douglas were Amber Emerson (27th, 20:16), Shannon Sturgess (29th, 20:21), Kylie Flannagan (34th, 20:50), Lydia Ogles (21:27) and Stacy Waggoner (23:08).
Sierra Lutheran's girls' varsity and boys' junior varsity teams also competed in the class races.
Jason Deterding took fifth in the sophomore race (20th overall) with a time of 16:13. He was followed closely by fellow sophomore John McRae at 16:14 (21st overall) and Carson Iverson took fourth in the freshman race with a 17:17.
Also running for the Falcon boys were Conor Love (17:34), Anthony Brewer (17:41), Bradley Goins (18:48), Jonny Harms (18:55), Tim Tollefson (18:56), Alex Borgman (23:18) and Sam Ansel (23:19).
For the Sierra Lutheran girls, Becky Grabow took 11th overall with a time of 18:55. Phoebe Mark came in at 21:53, Tori Jackson finished in 22:58, Karina Young posted a 24:47 followed by Brittany Rupert (25:35) and Abby Miller (26:22).
