Photos by Ray Hamill/HumboldtSports.com – Arcata’s Reece Thompson and Evan Poston in action at the Arcata Sports Complex on Wednesday.

By Ray Hamill — Arcata’s Evan Poston is peaking at the right time.

The impressive sophomore got his first career league win in the final H-DNL regular-season race of 2024 at the Arcata Sports Complex on Wednesday afternoon.

Poston crossed the finish line of the 5K race in a time of 16 minutes, 32.4 seconds, leading the Tigers to the team victory.

That will give Poston and the Tigers plenty of momentum heading into the upcoming league championships which will be held at the Arcata Marsh a week from Saturday.

Eureka senior Everett Docherty placed second with a time of 16:42.90, with Del Norte’s Dylan Rodriguez just seven seconds farther back in third (16:49.00).

Arcata teammates Levi Browne (16:52.10) and Ocean Walker (16:52.70) rounded out the top five as the Tigers took five of the top eight spots on the day.

Arcata scored 25 points as a team to comfortably beat the rest of the field, followed by Eureka (55), Fortuna (76) and Del Norte (82).

Eureka sophomore Ryder Bullman, who won last week’s race, placed sixth on Wednesday, with Reece Thompson (Arcata), Caden Demers (Arcata), Juan Ornelas (Fortuna) and Luke Padilla (Del Norte) finishing seventh through 10th, respectively.

The six regular season league races featured five different winners, with Ornelas the only runner to win twice.

And that means we should have a wide-open and exciting race for the league championship.

Docherty (week four) and Thomspon (week one) each also have a win this fall.

Jason Weldon led McKinleyville in 17th, Charlie Vanderpool led Northcoast Prep in 30th, and Brenden Knight led Hoopa in 35th.

Eureka’s Claire Gast dominated the girls race once again and placed first for the fifth time in her five league races this season.