The Jacoby Creek girls closed out the local youth cross country season with a big showing at last week’s county championships.
The event, which was organized by the Humboldt Redwoods Running Association for Youth (HRRAY) was held at the Arcata sports complex and included three races for both boys and girls.
The divisions included sixth to eighth graders, third to fifth graders and kindergarten to second graders.
And it was the Jacoby Creek runners who stole the show, taking three of the six team victories, including two of the three girls races.
The Panthers dominated the girls third to fifth grade race and took the top three spots, led by Olivia Spellmeyer, who finished first.
Spellmeyer’s teammates, Elsie Chisholm and Charlotte Landis, placed second and third, respectively, leading the Panthers to the team win, with Garfield Elementary placing second and Ambrosini Elementary in third.
Individually, Garfield teammates Sylvia Tout and Roslyn Bumgardner placed fourth and fifth individually, just one second apart.
The Jacoby Creek girls also won the sixth to eighth grade race, with McKinleyville second and Sunny Brae in third.
Winship’s Kinsley Yarbrough placed first individually, followed by Sunny Brae’s Emerson Okin in second and Jacoby Creek’s Ruby Mohrmann in third.
Rosa Nofsinger of Northcoast Prep Academy placed fourth, with McKinleyville’s Elizabeth Pimentel rounding out the top five, just one second faster than her twin sister, Olivia Pimentel, who placed sixth.
The Trinidad girls also enjoyed a big day in the kindergarten to second grade race.
Northern United-Humboldt second grader Serafina Fosnaugh was first across the finish line, followed by Trinidad teammates Faleen Barclay and Nyla Zerai, who placed second and third, respectively and led their team to the team victory.
Barclay was the only first grader in the top five.



Fuente Nueva placed second in the team competition, with Coastal Grove Charter in third.
Coastal Grove’s Maevyn Cordisco-Guild and Fuente Nueva’s Pippa Nottingham rounded out the top five individuals across the line.
In the boys sixth to eighth grade race, Sunny Brae had two runners place in the top three and took first as a team, comfortably beating the field.
Trinidad placed second in the team competition, with McKinleyville third.
Individually Winship’s Wyatt Davis took the victory, followed by Sunny Brae’s Soren James and Liam Whitney, who were second and third, respectively.
McKinleyville’s Anthony Som and Fortuna’s Richard Washburn rounded out the top five individual finishers, with Washburn barely edging Trinidad’s James Miner by just one-tenth of a second.
The Trinidad runners had a very good day with three top-two finishes as a team in the six races.
In addition to their victory in the girls kindergarten to second grade race and their second-place finish in the sixth to eighth grade boys race, Trinidad also placed first in the boys third to fifth grade race.
Jacoby Creek was second, with Garfield Elementary in third.


Fifth-grader Trystan Cavanagh led the Trinidad team with a first-place finish, beating third-grader Granite Price (unattached) by just three seconds.
Burnt Ranch’s Gavin Smith placed third, with Jules Davis of Garfield Elementary and Iver Vu of Fuente Nueva rounding out the top five.
Jacoby Creek’s third team victory on the day came in the boys kindergarten to second grade race.
Dows Prairie Elementary finished second as a team, followed by Fuente Nueva in third.
Four different schools were represented in the top four individual finishers, with Dows Prairie first-grader Enzo Arredondo barely edging Cuddeback second grader Iver Skavdal by less than half a second for the victory.
Fuente Nueva’s Finn Saxton placed third, with Oket’oh Moorehead of Jacoby Creek and Ivan Larson of Dows Prairie rounding out the top five.
The sixth to eighth grade races were 1.8 miles, the third to fifth grade races were 1.5 miles, and the kindergarten to second grade races were 0.8 miles.
The event was organized by HRRAY, in conjunction with the Six Rivers Running Club, the H-DNL high school teams and Arcata Rotary.




Categories: Cross Country, Youth sports

















