Now that’s how you start the season.
Before the first day of class at Summit High, the Tigers cross-country and mountain bike teams were setting the curve with decisive wins.
Saturday and Sunday, on home dirt in Frisco, the Tigers mountain bike team hosted hundreds of athletes for opening race of the season. Summit demolished the competition with four podiums and 14 top-10 finishes. Rising star Marin Little won the sophomore girls division. Maeve Niemkiewicz, little sister of defending Nordic state ski champ Carter, was third for freshman girls. Two seniors, Finn Brown and Fiona Florio, took seventh in their respective varsity divisions.
It was a promising start for the Tigers, now racing in a new division with heavyweights like Boulder and defending state champs, Colorado Rocky Mountain School. Last year, racing in a different division, the Tigers took seventh at state. The year before the team was fifth.
Down on the Front Range, the boys cross-country team claimed a varsity win at the Vista Nation 2-Mile Invitational. Junior Jay McDonald was second, followed by another junior, Lukas Remeikis, in sixth.
For the varsity girls junior Lily Benbow was the fastest in 14th. But a promising group of underclassmen stepped up, claiming a second-place team finish in the freshman/sophomore race with top-10 showings from Kayla Broecker and Sophie Dinse.