The Moffat County High School cross country team started the season the same place it ended last year. This time, there were a lot more post-race smiles.

“I think the course was still in some of their heads because we did so poorly on it last year,” coach Dustin Ence said. “This was a good and even surprising start for us.”

Last year, the state course was changed from a Denver location to Harrison High School in Colorado Springs. For the past two season openers, Harrison has hosted an invitational meet on the state championship course. But the Bulldogs didn’t participate in the invitational in 2003, so the state meet was the first they saw of the course.

This year, the Bulldogs were not only able to get some valuable experience on the course, but both the boys and girls teams won their division.

“Originally, we wished we could have been in the big-school division,” Ence said. “But now I’m glad we were in the smaller division, because it helped our confidence. Another good thing is that it erased the bad memories from state.”

Thursday there were four races. The 3A-4A races for boys and girls and the 4A-5A races for both as well. As Ence said, the ‘Dogs were in the lower division.

“Lower” though doesn’t describe the ability of some of the teams in the race for the boys. D’Evelyn, ranked fourth by the Rocky Mountain News, Sterling, sixth, and Woodland Park, eighth, all competed.

Moffat County — with sophomore Jake Miller finishing 15th; senior Steve Crisp was 18th; sophomore Jeremy Bird was 21st; and freshman Mike McNichol was 36th — finished four points ahead of both D’Evelyn and Sterling.

In the girls’ race, seniors Amelia Parker and Emily Sperl led a pack of four that ran together in the top 15 for the first two miles. The pack spread a bit the final mile but Parker and Sperl didn’t fade with sixth- and eighth-place finishes. Junior Cortney Grandbouche wasn’t far behind in 13th and sophomore Katie Morris was the final runner to count for the Bulldogs with a 22nd-place finish. The girls literally ran away with the race, winning by 31 points.

“It was great to see Amelia and Emily up there,” Ence said. “I don’t think we expected it, but now the girls have four runners who could be interchangeable at the front.”

There was little rest for the Bulldogs afterward. On Friday, they laced up the spikes for the Arapahoe Invitational in Denver. This time they would run against the larger schools. The boys team finished third losing only to two 5A schools in Fruita Monument and Heritage. Individually the order was a bit different from the day before.

Bird led the ‘Dogs in 14th place followed by Crisp, 18th; Miller, 26th; McNicol, 34th; and Lincoln Cleverly, 46th. On Thursday, the top four runners counted as the team score; on Friday, it was back to the usual top five.

The unranked boys continued to prove that preseason rankings mean little as they defeated Conifer, seventh, and Mullen, 10th in the race.

The girls finished fourth behind two 5A schools, Heritage and Coronado, and Mulle, the third-ranked 4A school. Parker, who had never been a top runner for the Bulldogs in the previous three years, led the pack again with an 11th-place finish. Grandbouche was 20th, Nelson was 25th, Morris was 46th, and running on a painful blister junior Alyssa Macomber finished 85th.