As soon as the Manhattan High Varsity cross country boys heard the news they finished off the Saturday meet in first, they expressed their elation to starting off the 2014 season on a high note across the entire team.

“After hearing that, that just made my day. I’m definitely very proud of my teammates,” senior Michael Melgares said.

Saturday marked the cross country team’s only home meet of the regular season with the Manhattan Invitational at Warner Park, hosting 14 teams from Varsity level to middle school in the early morning. Manhattan took the meet with both Varsity teams taking first with the boys scoring 46. The girls scored 23; the JV girls also took first with 31 points scored, and the JV boys took second with 61 points scored. Both the Varsity and JV girls took the meet with their top five runners all finishing in the top 10 for both teams, and the Varsity and JV boys secured their wins with their top five runners finishing in the top 20.

“We just wanted to make sure we started off solid and didn’t bite off more than we could chew,” sophomore Cara Melgares said. “And I think we did a pretty good start and held on to where we wanted to be in the race.”

Melgares, freshman Christina Martinez and junior Mackenzie Gwinner all finished in the top three individually of the Varsity race followed by senior Megan Ochoa in seventh place and senior Taylor Efurd finishing in 10th place.

“I was nervous. Always nervous. But I had my team behind me, so I wasn’t scared,” Efurd said.

The team’s success was evident to coach Susan Melgares from what she saw across all the races that day.

“What I saw today that I really liked was I saw people tired in the middle and they fought through it. They kept going even though they were tired, and that’s so much of a challenge of cross when the finish is a long ways away and you just got to keep putting one foot in front of the other. So that was good.”

Going through with the season in next week’s meet in Emporia means the team will be preparing for the year with a group capable of repeating last year’s success.

“We’re going to have to show up to every meet to win. We have to bring it every time,” sophomore Jackson Schroeder said.