Redhawk cross country got off to a fast start to their season on Saturday at the Northwest Texan Relays. The team had four groups of two finish within the top five of their respective races. 

Eight Redhawks medaled in total including that of junior Andrew Jauregui, junior Fernando Levya-Montiel, senior Jada Williams, and freshman Sofia Golladay who each received silver medals, as well as senior Devansh Saxena, senior Juan Arce, junior Chance Moore, junior Takumi Harima, freshmen Kathryn Murphy and freshman Sophia Yu who each received medals placing within the top 5 teams. 

Most of the athletes seemed pleased with their results.

“I think one of the things that I enjoyed from this meet was that we pushed ourselves out of our comfort zone,” Levya-Montiel said. “We got out quick and positioned ourselves in the front.”

Freshman Sofia Golladay stole the show and came second overall with partner Jada Williams. She believes teamwork was a large part of this early success.

“We all worked well together with our partners and we all pushed,” Golladay said via text.

However, Golladay recognizes that there is much adversity left to overcome this season.

“It might be difficult transitioning to a longer distance and having more runners to compete against,” Golladay said via text. “We can prepare by increasing the mileage on our long runs combined with the daily workouts provided by coaches.”

The unique format of the meet left coach Ben Manning unsure about how things would turn out.

“Going in I didn’t really know what to expect,” Manning said. “I think once we understood the logistics of how it was going to work and kind of sized up the competition we were able to go out and really have success.”