Santa Clarita, CA — The Vikings battled at the first Foothill League race under near ideal race conditions over the hilly course at College of the Canyons. With stiff local competition, the Vikings made their mark across all divisions and showed the region they are a team to be reckoned with. The Frosh/Soph boys set the tone for the race-day finishing tied for first through the top 5, but ultimately second by one place in the 6th man-tiebreaker. Miles Archie led the group with a strong 3rd place at 17:10. We saw PRs up and down this team with huge improvements from racing on this course last year. Highlights include Garett Bruemmer (18:19, 2:42 better), Amogh Chedde (18:43, 4:36 better), Gabriel Karney (28:26, 3:40 better), and Gabriel Navarro (21:22, 2:32 better). First timers over the course also impressed with Zeke Brooke (17:28), Owen St. Clair (18:54) and Liam Schol (19:26). The Frosh/Soph girls surprised the competition with a strong showing finishing 2nd. Frosh duo Anika Bhattacharya and Aleksa Straub both finished at 22:52 in 8th and 9th, respectively. A stellar start for these two racing the full three miles for the first time! Soph Sophia Langer (23:11) had a 1:39 distance PR to finish 12th and Chloe Schutte (18th, 24:31) and Kassidy Olsen (20th, 25:01) continue to impress! Huge improvements from Janani Prakash (27:48), Irene Kim (28:02), and Krithi Ganti (30:26) had each of them nearly 3 minutes better than last year! The Varsity Boys team faced one of the toughest leagues in the region with three top ranked teams in the field. Luis Torres Orrala made a quantum leap to finish 6th in the field at 15:40, 2:51 better than his PR on this course! Cash Klinger finished few places back at 15:44 over a minute better than last year. Emilio Oviedo had a 31 second improvement finishing at 16:21, Rhett Klinger finished at 16:41 in only his 3rd cross country race, and Sophomore Luke Rezkallah is making a huge impact on this bunch running 16:42 a 2:34 improvement from last year! Finishing 4th in the field keeps this team in contention for the post season. Emily Farrell (19:07) absolutely ran away from the field leading the Varsity Lady Vikings to a 4th place team finish. Liana Sushinsky had a solid performance (20:31,12th) with Mica Fenelon continuing to impress dropping over a minute from last year to finish at 21:14. Freshman Nicole Chambers (21:50) and Senior Sam Armitage (22:56) filled out the scoring quintet finish well ahead of fifth and take the first step to extending their season into November. The Junior Varsity boys had a standout performances with Michael Hatch (20:01) almost 3 minutes better than his last performance at COC and Connor Landress (20:16) 90 seconds better than a year ago. Dylan Marshall gets a Gold Star for the biggest PR of the day dropping 4:41 on this course. The standout performance in the JV girls race came from Senior Emily Stimac. Her 27:16 was a 2:51 improvement from last year on this course.