Next year will mark a new chapter for Judge Memorial’s individual sports teams, cross country, golf, swimming, and track. They all made the jump from 3a to a bigger, and more competitive 4a region. Their new region will consist of many former 5A, current 4A and 3A schools, like Judge. These teams consist of Highland, East, Jordan, Juan Diego, Park City, Judge, Murray, Park City, Cottonwood. 

     In this boys cross country season Judge continued to dominate the competition  by winning 3a region again and beating their new upcoming regional rivals Highland and East in big victories. The wins set the tone for the season and helped confirm the fact that Judge can hold their own against tougher competition. 

     Meanwhile, their new regional rivals faced some struggles throughout the season and in the postseason. Highland barely qualified for the 5A state championship meet, placing 10th out of 14 in section A of the divisional round, finishing near the bottom, where the 10th place team is last to qualify for the state meet. East fared much worse, placing last place in their divisional race and missing the whole state championship meet entirely. Among the new region teams, I couldn’t find much on some of them but the majority of the teams ( Highland, East, Juan Diego, Cottonwood etc.) didn’t have any boys place top 20 in various races like the 5K, besides one senior at Highland, Jacob Ward who ran a 16:41 to claim 16th. 

     Despite the tougher competition, Judge’s cross country athletes and coaches are excited to move to 4A after years of dominating their 3A region and placing consistently at the state meet. It should be a great challenge and should motivate them to push themselves even more against new competitors. With the same work ethic Judge already has, the Bulldogs could become a scarily underrated team in the 4A division and place well at state next year.