The Bret Clements Bath Invitational is one of the larger early season meets in the state of Michigan.  The Forest Hills Eastern varsity cross country teams participated in the medium-sized school "Class 2" race with 15 runners.  Our JV runners competed in a race with over runners from over 48 different schools.  Fortunately we had a beautiful racing morning and great racing conditions on the course.  Our girls varsity team dominated the field with 33 point 1st place finish and 6 runners placing in the top 12 of the meet, while our boys varsity finished 2nd behind a strong Haslett team.  In the JV girls race, we finished 4th behind defending state champion EGR and perennial D1 powerhouses Northville and Rockford.  Our JV boys have some work to do in developing depth (we finished 9th), but still had some lifetime personal bests and season bests.  Individual highlights include:

• Girls Varsity: 7/9 girls ran lifetime PR's (personal records).  Sarah Dixon dropped 49 seconds (19:44), Joey Egby (19:51) broke 20:00 for the first time in her life, Ella Bowen (20:23) cut off 17 seconds from her 2018 regional performance, Madi Wirt (20:29) ran the fastest time of her life for the 2nd meet in a row, Sammy Hunting smashed (22:24) the 23:00 barrier for the first time ever, Amanda Bond pushed through some pain and (23:08) ran a gutsy 3-second PR, while Ellory Clason (23:41) shaved 19 seconds off of her Saranac time.  Seniors Landyn Howell (4th overall) and Claire Parish (7th overall) both improved significantly on their time and place from this meet last year.
• Girls JV: All 26 girls in this race ran season bests; 19 ran lifetime bests.  Breck McCloskey led the way in a jam-packed field (247 runners) with a 5th place finish.  Ali Hunting (21:53) was close behind, finishing 7th overall in her cross country debut.  Big PR's included a 2:41 drop from Hannah Bhaskaran (36:59), a 2:01 improvement by Meghan Hill (36:20), an 81 second best by Aiyah Jones (32:10), Hope Noyes (29:11) cutting 2:21 off of her Saranac time, a nearly 3 minute PR by Sara Plante (36:54), Emma di Pretoro (27:06) posting a time 1:24 faster than last week, a solid 61 second improvement by Kennedy Southland (26:50), and 72 seconds by Zella Stratbucker (29:58).  Other PR's came from Anika Deshpande (33:16) who improved by 30 seconds, Rose Doctor (25:30) with a 10 second improvement, Ella Evans (24:59) dropping 18 seconds, Ashlyn Maurer (26:05) shaving off 19 seconds, Isabelle Stressman-May (25:54) with a 17 second drop, Maddie Thompson (24:18) posting a lifetime PR for the second consecutive meet, Allison Vincent (28:27) improving 49 seconds, and Lauren Walls (28:27) chopping 33 seconds off of her previous PR. 
•