Abi Archer (
Chaparral, Sr.) very nearly broke 17-minutes for 5km at the Desert Twilight Festival on Friday to take the no. 1 spot on the Arizona leaderboard. It was a PR performance by around thirty seconds.
Bowen Martin led the charge as Arizona's top senior for the
Page Sand Devils to 5th place in the Boys Sweepstakes race, while
Lee Nasewytewa (Desert Vista, Sr.) blasted 15:16 for 5km to collect a second school record this season. Four more Seniors ran under 16 minutes on Friday.
Meanwhile,
Leo Daschbach (
Highland, Jr.) blew the doors open for Arizona on Friday night as the first boy under 15 minutes at Grande Sports in four years, since the Outstanding Class of 2015 back when Desert Twilight first moved to Casa Grande. Nine more juniors went sub-16 in the same race. His female teammate,
Caroline McLeskey (Jr.) tactically moved through pack in the Girls Sweepstakes and blasted a new PR of 17:19 for a 4th place finish. She wasn't though only junior posting a fast time over the weekend.
Hana Hall (
Flagstaff, Jr.) of the placed 2nd in the Girls Varsity race at the Master's College Mustang Challenge in Santa Clarita, CA and is now at the head of the Division 2 Girls Leaderboard.
Chandler's
Leonela Lizzaraga ran 18:36 on Friday night and is currently the no. 1 freshman in Arizona. However,
Red Mountain's got a solid follow-up to their top girl
Niki Hemmerlin, in freshmen
Taylor Jacobs and
Ariel Fendenheim. Both of them ran PR performances in sub-19 on Friday night. Only four freshmen have run under the 17-minute mark for 5km this season. While we haven't seen much out of the freshman boys until now, the season's not over yet. Could we see some big performances out of the freshmen class to make the all-state teams come November?
Check out the current top 100 fastest times by grade in the state of Arizona as of October 3rd.