The Carson High girls cross country team showed dramatic improvement over last year at the Clovis (Calif.) Invitational on Saturday.
Carson's boys also virtually equaled last year's performance despite not being at full strength.
Carson's girls improved its place in its class from 13th last year to fifth this year, improving its time as a team by about three minutes over last year. Yvonne Hollett led the way, improving her time by 36 seconds in finishing eighth in 19 minutes, 17 seconds. Hollett finished 31st last year.
Behind Hollett, Carson had five runs finish with 21 seconds of each other, Jenny Mital was 32nd in 20:19, a one minute, 13 second improvement, Gloria Sosa was 36th in 20:24, a one minute improvement over her best time this year, Christy Works was 37th in 20:27, Haley Ward was 38th in 20:28, almost a two-minute improvement over last year, Amanda Gordon was 42nd in 20:40 and despite running with a sore arch, Kat Vonrumpf finished in 21:00.
Carson's boys, which was ninth last year, finished 10th this year. But Carson was able to equal its time from last year despite being without two of its top runners and having another runner hurt.
Nick Schlager and Wade Smith were both out with leg injuries and Caleb Carter ran with a sore ankle.
Richard Shroy led the CHS boys, finishing seventh out of 172 runners in 16:10, a 24-second improvement over last year. Also for Carson Zack Mapes improved his best time by a minute-and-a-half, finishing in 17:04, Logan Philippi finished in 17:17, which was 17 seconds faster than his time last week at Stanford, Carter finished in 17:29, Ethan Graber finished in 17:37, which equaled his best time, Brent Moyle finished in 18:34, David McMasters finished in 18:57 and Tyler Davies finished in 19:24.
For Carson's JV girls, Kristen Dockery finished in 22:51.