It was a sight to behold. When the lead runner crested the rise 130 meters from the finish, it was West Seattle High School's Kyle MacDonald, all alone.

What had been a two-runner drama with less than a mile to go dissolved in the face of MacDonald's first sub-19 minute performance. The sophomore's time of 18:41 on the Lincoln Park course was an eye-popping one minute, 45 second improvement over his best from last year.

Thrilling as that was, it was but a prelude to the girls' race. West Seattle's Kylen Johnson duplicated the feat, without the drama. Johnson led uncontested, from start to finish, winning in the convincing time of 21:04. The excitement came a little over a minute-and-a-half later when Johnson's teammates, Thea Nauss and Sarah Austin, poured across the finish line in second and third places, ahead of hard-charging West Seattle resident Ellen Teel, running in the colors of Ingraham High School.

Scoring a cross country meet starts with a personal touch, as each runner is handed a numbered place card after crossing the finish line. Unbeknownst to most of the runners, providing that personal touch Friday afternoon was Chief Sealth principal John Boyd.

Notwithstanding Principal Boyd's encouraging presence, Chief Sealth's boys finished third with 60 points behind West Seattle's winning 28 points and Ingraham's 47 points. Scoring West Seattle's points, in addition to MacDonald, were Jacob Nauss (4th), Cooper Sinai-Yunker (6th), tenacious Jack Hilton (7th), and welcome senior Justin Selk (10th), in his first race. Nauss' time was a personal course record by a minute and eleven seconds, while Hilton lowered his previous best by 40 seconds.

Completing the scoring for the winning West Seattle High's girls' team were fast improving freshman Mel Frey and junior newcomer Chelsea Jackson.

The unseasonable heat took its toll on times the following Thursday in the hills of Lower Woodland. The number of West Seattle High School scoring runners who improved their course times could be counted on three fingers: for the boys, team captain and number two runner, Jacob Nauss, and number four runner, Jack Hilton; for the girls, number three runner, Mel Frey.

Girls' team captain, Kylen Johnson, for the second time this season, took a serious second place against the powerful and deep Bishop Blanchet girls' team. Securing a scoring place for the first time this year, as number five runner, was Jessica Nichols. However, the injury- and illness-decimated West Seattle girls lost to Bishop Blanchet, 44-19 (low score wins).

The boys' team score was good new-bad news. Though the West Seattle boys finished ahead of Cleveland, not even Kyle MacDonald's individual sixth place could prevent West Seattle from being skunked by Bishop Blanchet. The three-team score was Bishop Blanchet with the minimum 15 points, West Seattle 50, Cleveland 77. Pushing his team from behind, with a personal improvement of nearly three minutes, was West Seattle Herald carrier Aaron Morrison.

West Seattle resident Ron Thompson, running for Cleveland High, finished thirteenth in the team scoring.