The Dragon and Lady Dragon Cross Country teams hosted some of the most elite competition in the country last weekend at Bob Jones Park in the Southlake 5K Invitational.

If you have ever hosted an elite event, you know the kind of work that goes in. A shoutout to the amazing Carroll Cross Country parents and support staff - who started very early in the morning for the elite events.

Breakout Senior Michael Fuller lead the team with a 7th place individual finish at 15:21. There was very little space between the Dragon pack, as runners 1-5 finished just 23 seconds apart from each other. Junior Jaxon Glenn finished 16th overall with a time of 15:28. Junior Grant Norgart, 26th at 15:39. Junior Adhaven Palanivelrajan (32nd, 15:42), and Junior Claudio Auns (38th, 15:44) rounded out the scoring five. The remaining top seven posted impressive marks with Junior Evan O’Donnell (16:02) and Senior Gavin Folkerts (16:13) making big moves to close out the race.

The Lady Dragons finished 3rd, just an eyelash behind defending 6A defending girls state champions Flower Mound. The Lady Dragons were also tightly bunched as all five Lady Dragons finished within 43 seconds of each other - which is huge because the way cross country points are scored - the more runners you have close together the lower your point total is. Cross Country, like Golf, low scores are a good thing.

Senior Luna Gutierrez came in as the top Lady Dragon on the day with a 7th place finish at 18:05. Senior Lilah Gornell (18th, 18:36) had one of the standout performances of the day followed by teammates Junior Abigail Perez (21st, 18:39), Junior Megan Bergman (23rd, 18:42) and Junior Grace McIlivain (33rd, 18:48).

Carroll Head Coach Justin Leonard noted, “We are very proud of the way our athletes competed today. For several of our varsity runners, this was their first 5K of the season, providing a valuable benchmark to gauge their progress. For some of our younger runners, it marked their second 5K, an important step in their development and in gaining race experience. We are encouraged by the direction of the program and confident that we will be prepared for championship season.

The teams will have a week of practice before returning to racing with a split squad performance on Thursday, Sept. 18th and the 19th.