Texans Dominate Arkansas' Chile Pepper XC Festival


Girls Caliente Race

First, it was California's Woodbridge and last week it was Arizona's Desert Twilight. In both meets, Texas athletes enjoyed individual and team success while crossing state lines to compete in high profile cross country meets.

Yesterday, many Texas programs took to the Chile Pepper Cross Country Festival Fayetteville, Arkansas and it was more like a Texas takeover.

The El Caliente Girls Varsity race was the first high school race on the schedule and you might have thought it was the Texas state meet. Texas girls took the first four finishes and had six in the top 10.

Atascocita junior Avery Clover has been having a very good cross country season and complimented it with the win yesterday. Clover ran a 18:07.60 just five seconds off her PR to get a 12 second victory.

The next three spots were taken up by eventual team champion runners Jenna Holland (18:19.30), Kaylie Cox (18:39.70), and Lydia Lo (18:43.30) from Southlake Carroll. They helped lead their Lady Dragons squad to an extremely low 42 point win total in a race that had 629 runners in it.

Rounding out the top 10 runners for Texans were Austin Owen (6th - 18:49.70) from Marcus and Andrea Acuna (9th - 18:51.70) from Fort Worth Boswell.

Following Southlake Carroll's top spot finish, there were three other top 10 team finishes by Texas teams. Grapevine finished with a second place team finish (led by Caroline Burrow - 13th - 19:05.30), Colleyville Heritage was fourth (led by Felisa Saheib - 16th - 19:09.80), and Keller was 10th (led by Vera Thompson - 66th - 20.11.80).

Boys Caliente Race

In the El Caliente Boys Varsity race, more Texas studs laced the field of 756 runners. 

La Porte senior Ryan Schoppe led the first half of the race when approximately had a 15m lead. He made a decision (non physical related) to drop out of the race.

However, Texas still had back up as Melissa junior and 2018 UIL 4A state champ Judson Greer was running very well. Greer ended up taking the win by 25 seconds as he ran 15:06.40.

Joining Greer in the top 10 were Southlake Carroll runners Nate Lannen (6th - 15:40.80) and Solomon Chavez (7th - 15:42.90) who ran a big time PR.

As with the girls race, Carroll boys were the overall team winners followed by third place Lucas Lovejoy (led by Will Muirhead - 12th - 15:53.60) and sixth place Grapevine (led by Walker St. John - 26th- 16:07.15).

Texans will now turn their focus to championship season as district meets are quickly approaching.