Taylor Wright and Cori Brown of Northwest started off the season strong. They took first and third places respectively in both the 55-meter and 300-meter dashes. Churchill's Karis Lee took second in the 55-meter and Blake's Kenya Allison took second in the 300-meter dash.

Wright is almost immediately back to her indoor personal bests of 7.14 and 40.78. Her time of 7.20 is ahead of where she began last year as a freshman. The Northwest duo may have work to do to hold off the rapidly-improving Kenya Allison of Blake.


The Damascus girls came out strong in the middle distance events. First, Damascus led B-CC for most of the girls 4x800-meter relay. Damascus crossed the finish line first, just ahead of B-CC in what was a fun race to watch, but almost every team was disqualified for missing a lap in the middle of the race. Officially, Gaithersburg won the race in 12:16.02 because it was one of just two teams not disqualified, but it was likely that Damascus (9:19) and maybe B-CC (9:21) would have been under 10:00 if they ran the proper number of laps.


Damascus showed off its middle distance strength individually when Melissa Kameka took first in the 500m (1:23.42) and Samantha Kameka took seventh (1:26.03). In the open 800m, Samantha Kameka took second in 2:26.20 while teammate Juliana Alcamo took fourth in 2:27.02.


Kyra Badrian of Paint Branch High School separated from the field in the second half of the 800-meter to take the win in 2:25.57.


Katriane Kirsch of Walter Johnson High School was the class of the field in the girls 1600-meter run. Kirsch did not take the lead right away, but when she moved, nobody could go with her. She won by fifteen seconds in 5:24.48.


Northwest's Sofia Zarate was dominant in winning the 3200-meter race. She created a gap from the field early on and closed with a hard kick in 12:12.06.


Eddita Pessima of Northwest set a personal best to win the 55-meter hurdles (8.76) and matched her personal best to tie for the win in the high jump (5 ft).

Paint Branch freshman Kaya Rae Dunbar was right there tying Pessima in the high jump (5 ft) and took second place in the 55-meter hurdles in 8.92. Dunbar is already MoCo's sixth fastest freshman in the 55-meter hurdles in the last decade.


Stephanie Bateky tied Dunbar and Pessima for the win in the high jump (5 ft), won the long jump with a mark of 16-04.25, and took second place in the triple jump (32-03.00). The triple jump was won by Ashley Santini of Northwest (34-00.00).


The Blake High School girls threw down the best 4x200 and 4x400 relays, winning both events in 1:47.32 and 4:13.85 respectively. Both times are top ten performances by MoCo relay teams in the month of December in the last decade.

Sophomore Mallory Anderson of Damascus was the top performer in the shot put with a mark of 30-10.50.

Blake and Damascus stood out as teams that will be capable of accumulating big point totals this year, but it was obvious that nobody in MCPS will touch Northwest this year. Northwest High School claimed 60 points in field events alone which would have defeated all other teams. Overall, Northwest racked up 137 point ahead of second place Blake who accumulated 58 points.