Stars on the rise at Hurricane.

Although it's only the first meet of the year, the Hurricane meet showed a lot, as many big stars from the south converged on the tough course for their season opener. Caleb Ellis of Saint Albans (ranked #7 on the RuntheArb poll) showed what a hard summer of training can do as he just went from being 'some guy on the St. Albans team' to being one of the brightest rising stars in the state. He ran away from the field to an impressive early season win with a time of 17:41. Trey Beckett of Midland (ranked #6) held on for 2nd place. Beckett has shown his fitness in some early season meets/ time trials and is coming into the season ready to make some big waves (if you've seen his tatoo that would be funny to you). The competiton just got a lot tougher in that region, which will ultimately push the level of running to new heights. Also of note was St. Albans runner Andy Bailey who seems to be catching onto this whole Cross Country scene. Predominately known for his aggressive mid-distance racing, he looks to be rewriting his running resume with a new found skill set of racing on grass. Winfield's Matt Burton makes his first race at the AAA level a success and is now considered a threat to the top ten. The same goes for Caleb Bowen of Hurricane, Dustin Meyers of Parkersburg and any one of Midland's nasty pack of runners.

Men's Team - Looks like Midland will be taking over the polls as the #1 team after this weekend with their impressive pack. Even with Beckett being in the best shape he's ever been in, the 1-5 split was still only 34 seconds. That's pretty insane. Their 2-5 runner were within 5 seconds of each other making them almost impossible to beat. The St. Albans crew ran great but they were spread out over a much larger margin. There was no sign of Caudill (one of their top distance runners in track) so they may not have been running full force. And to further hinder their chances rumors on the message board have Ellis down for the count with a post race stress fracture. We all know the message board posters never lie about things like that, so that info should be as good as gold.

On the Girls side, all I have to say is WOW to the Hurricane runners for an impressive opener. Alex Dent (ranked 5th on RuntheArb) smashing her own course record from last year (and in case you don't remember, she was pretty dang fit last year) by over 32 seconds and taking her first win of the year with a time of 20:17. Just as impressive is Josie Crouch (ranked 9th) in her Cross Country opener taking 2nd place only 10 seconds back of Dent. I kind of figured Crouch's natural abilities would allow her to excell this Cross Country season, but I wasn't expecting her to catch on that quickly. I guess having a talented runner like Dent as your training partner and Bill Posey as your coach aren't going to hinder your chances of being a superstar in this state. Also, it looks like Winfields Megan Truelove isn't intimidated by her new AAA competition. On the contrary, it looks like she plans to up her game to compete on their level. She may have got passed over on the first week's preseason poll, but she certainly locked in a spot with her impressive effort to finish 3rd.

Girl's Team - The Hurricane girls are setting themselves up to be the team to beat this year. They have a highly intimidating duo crushing people up front, and freshman Sara Davis really helping them out by moving up to be their 3rd runner, but their 4-5 will have to make a jump. University's ladies can still match up with the Hurricane's top three runner with the two Martinelli's sister and Van der Sloot. The team title is going to rest on the shoulders of these team's 4th and 5th runners. We haven't seen University yet but we might get a preview at the Knights Relay coming up this weekend. Midland looks to be off to a slow star but I have faith that this team will transform in the coming weeks.