CUT BANK — Claudia Hewston highlighted Polson’s season-opening cross country meet, finishing sixth in the Mike Reynolds Cross Country Time Trials in Cut Bank on Friday.

Hewston’s 20-minute, 21-second race put her less than a minute behind second-place Corinne Hamilton of Glacier. Bigfork’s McKena Morley ran away from the pack, finishing in 17:20 to win.

“The weather was pretty wild, but our team ran hard and started the season off well,” said Pirate coach Matt Seeley, alluding to the hailstorm that broke out near the end of the race.

Despite the weather, Polson saw three other girls finish in the top 15. Alisha Jore (21:09) turned in a 12th place finish, and Isabella Seemann (21:15) and Tegan Bauer (21:23) finished 14th and 15th, respectively.

“It was pretty great to see four Polson runners in the top 1 5, even running against tough AA schools like Glacier and Flathead,” Seeley said. “With Hallie [Hovenkotter] getting healthy soon, we should have a formidable top-five scorers compared to most Class A schools.”

Tel Motichka led the Pirate boys, finishing 11th with a 17:30.

The young Pirates team executed team running effectively, with the next five finishers—Cade Howlett, Chris McDonald, Warren Wood, Matt Sitter and Cash Sisler—all within 30 seconds of each other (between Howlett’s 19:26 and Sisler’s 19:55). Seeley said that was a good sign.

“Team running like this is great for motivation and fun to watch too,” Seeley said. “If this group can work hard to move up into the 18s and then the 17s, they will be quite a force later in the season.”

Seeley was also encouraged by much of the team’s improvement on their previous times despite the stormy conditions. Nine Polson runners improved on their time trial runs from a week prior.

Seeley will take his top sixteen runners—eight boys and eight girls—to Spokane for the Highlander Invitational this weekend. The rest of the team will run on Friday in the Ronan Invitational at Mission Mountain Golf Course.