The Boys Cross Country team was on fire today at the wicked-fast and competitive Ottawa Hills Invitational, hosted at Riverside Park in Grand Rapids on September 18. Here are our results. In a loaded field of elite individuals and top-notch teams, the Varsity Boys finished 4th, behind only state-ranked Lowell (#1), Traverse City West (#2) and Jenison (#3#, while, in the process, we defeated Rockford (ranked #10) and Caledonia (ranked #11). Our top 5 varsity runners finished within only 1 minute and 9 seconds of each other, coming together as a tight and formidable team pack that will prove formidable to any team in the state this season. On the Junior Varsity side, our crew finished 2nd as a team, with our top 5 finishing within less than a minute of each other, showcasing the depth of strong effort and competitive fire that our boys exhibited across the board today. Almost everyone on the team achieved a Lifetime Personal Record or Season Best Time today on the fast Riverside Park course, which is especially encouraging for the guys after the brutally challenging nature of last weekend's competition in Kensington Metropark. Notably, Rylen Richey ran a Personal Record time of 15:35 over 5k, and even though the speed of the course must be taken into consideration, Rylen's time is the 11th fastest ran in Division 1 this season, which bodes well for the future of Rylen's season as he campaigns for All-State Honors. Additionally, Hudson Skinner and Noah Thelen each topped their previous best-times by over 40 seconds, Tristan Rogers continues to improve as he topped his previous best mark by nearly 1 minute, Leo Detmers saw improvement of more than 70 seconds over his previous best, and Cyrus Leopold improved on his debut race by about 85 seconds! I could write all evening about all of the great things that our student athletes worked hard towards this evening, but those are just a few highlights of the evening.