Palo Alto High School’s girls’ cross-country team finished third at the Lowell Invitational on Saturday afternoon for the team’s first meet of the season. The Lady Vikes scored a total of 106 points, trailing behind Presentation (106 points and a higher average mile time)  and Villa Park High School (92 points).

Christine Bayliss (‘15) from San Ramon Valley finished first overall with a time of 17:46, averaging 6:04 per mile. Nora Rosati (’13) placed first for Paly and sixth overall with a time of 18:46, and an average of 6:24 per mile. Katie Foug (‘14) placed eighth overall finishing the 2.9 mile hilly course with a time of 18:52.

The girls’ assistant coach, Sasha Robinson, had high expectations for the team going into the meet.

“I think we are going to do very well, we have a really good team this year,” said Robinson. “Nora [Rosati] came in really fast at the Gunn meet, so I think she will do very well this week, we have Chika, Katie, and Sophie to bring us in strong and hopefully place first or second.”

Even though the team did not reach Robinson’s hopes, Coach Jones was extremely satisfied with the team’s overall performance as much competition arose from other 35 other schools present at the meet.

“It’s a real tough meet with all the competition, but the [girls] that ran, ran very well today, we did great,” Jones said.

The loss of a few girls to injuries may have played a role in the outcome of the meet.

“We had a couple injured people that didn’t run today, we might have had placed better on the varsity,” Jones said.

Coach Jones is excited for this season as he is impressed by the overall performance of the team in the last two meets.

The Lady Vikes will be running on September 25, at the SCVAL Central Park meet in Santa Clara.