Carroll girls pull off impressive feat at district

The Carroll girls cross country team did something remarkable at its district meet last week.

Out of the 49 runners at the competition, the Lady Dragons finished one through seven to claim the district championship and show that every Carroll runner is faster than every other team’s fastest runner.

“I thought that we would have a good performance, but I didn’t really expect them to go one through seven,” coach Justin Leonard said.

Leonard said that he was extremely pleased with the team’s effort at district.

“I thought the meet went well,” Leonard said. “We did a pretty good job. It’s always the goal in district to go in and of course to win and advance to the regional meet and try to get through the race. We tried to not really deplete everything that we have — tried to go in and win and have a good performance, but also at the same time, we don’t want to exhaust ourselves at the district meet … it was a good situation.”

Leonard said he never remembers the girls team finishing one through seven at the district meet before and said that he had some words for them when they finished.

“I just told them, you know, ‘Great job’ and you know, it’s fun, it’s always good to see, because the kids work so hard,” Leonard said. “You know, they run year around and it’s something that kind of comes together and just to see them do a performance like that at a championship race, it’s always a good thing to see. So I just congratulated them and told them, ‘job well done.’”

Leonard said the goals beyond district were pretty straight forward.

“Yeah, the goal is always to win state and that’s what we shoot for and train for, so that’s the ultimate goal is to go by regionals and handle our business and get one of those top four spots, and then move on to state,” Leonard said last week. “You know, right now is an exciting time for the kids because again, this is what they train for, year around, for this. So we’re excited. And you know our goal, every year we set our goal is to win the state meet, so that’s what we’re gearing up for right now.”

▪  The Grapevine boys and girls both won district championships as well and are headed to the regional meet.

▪  For Colleyville Heritage, David Strome won an individual district championship and is headed to regionals, and the boys team finished third to advance.

This story was originally published October 26, 2015 at 2:39 PM with the headline "Carroll girls pull off impressive feat at district."