Maple Valley, WA - The Northwest Region Championship men's and women's cross country races were hosted by Green River College at Lake Wilderness Park in Maple Valley, WA.  It was a beautiful, calm, and crisp autumn day for a race in what would be the final preparation before the NWAC Championship Meet.  Participating schools were Whatcom CC, Olympic College, Edmonds College, Pierce College (women only), Green River College, and EvCC.   

In the men's 8k race, the host Gators ran away with the northwest region title by finishing 1st, 2nd, 4th, 5th, and 8th to score 20 points, winning the meet by 32 points over second place Edmonds College.  Two EvCC runners were scratched due to injury/illness, so the Trojans only competed 3 runners, not enough to post a team score.  Freshman Liam O'Brian was the first Trojan to finish with a time of 30:08.8 in 14th place.  Teammates Vitallii Shvets finished 20th with a time of 32:46.4 and Joseph Heisley finished 23rd at 33:59.7. 

In the women's 5k, Green River again took home the hardware with another dominate perfromance, scoring 19 team points, 18 points ahead of 2nd place Olympic.  Individually however, the competition was much more balanced as the top 5 finishers came from 5 different schools.  Pierce's  Anastasiia Lemesh and Whatcom's Izabelle Anderson were the front runners and it came down to a close finish at the end.  Lemesh edged out Anderson by .05 seconds to take first with a time of 20:52.5 and setting a new PR.  Edmonds' top finisher Monserrat Lopez came across 44 seconds later followed by the Trojans' top finisher Emma Arceo who finished with a time of 21:54.5 and setting her own new PR by 11.5 seconds.  Johanna Schmidt and Kayla Shueller also set 5k PR's and finished 17th and 18th respectively. 

The final meet of the season will be the NWAC Championships on November 12th at Chambers Creek Park in University Place, WA.  The women will race at 11am, followed by the men's race at noon.