KingCo Class Races 2026: The Programs Worth Watching
Issaquah senior Lucy Duafala competes in the JV Gold race at the HOKA John Payne Invitational.
I stick to the South Sound for the most part. There are plenty of races to keep me busy throughout the season, but every year I wish I'd gone to some meets a little out of reach. Seeing the athletes up close, getting their photos, watching how they interact with one another — that's part of why I love shooting XC.
As I finalized my calendar this year, I was still hunting for an early-season race that could give me a real read on some of the teams and athletes I don't normally cross paths with. A September 10th meet at Lake Sammamish was a curious one — and once I looked at who'd be in the field, it was a no-brainer.
Eastlake. Inglemoor. Issaquah. Mercer Island. Programs I don't see very often, and the results sheet from last year's state championships tells you exactly why that's a shame:
Mercer Island — 3A Girls State Champions
Issaquah — 4A Girls State Champions
Inglemoor — 3A, 8th place at state
Eastlake — 4A, 6th place at state, led by individual state champion Aubrey Wilems
The KingCo Class Races run a shorter 2-mile course, and as the name suggests, it's grade-on-grade — freshmen against freshmen, sophomores against sophomores, and so on. As the freshmen take their first steps as high school athletes, the upper classes will be knocking the rust off to see where they stack up against themselves and their competition. Every heat will have runners off state championship teams, individual state champions, and NXR participants on the line. A lot of lingering questions are about to get answered early.
Here's who's worth watching, working from the field's edges in toward the two teams built to contend all the way to Pasco.
Names to Know
A few individual results worth flagging before we get to the team-level programs:
Elin Beeler (Lake Washington) finished 7th at state as a freshman last year — a result that's easy to miss on a team without much else around it, but it's a legitimate mark for a freshman on the 4A course.
Elin Beeler finished 7th at state as a freshman — a mark that's easy to overlook without more around it, but a real one nonetheless.
George Kosseff (Juanita) finished 38th at state as a sophomore — the strongest individual result on a Juanita boys team that finished 17th as a program.
Inglemoor
Grace Ding pulls away from the pack — the Inglemoor junior took 13th at state last year and enters 2026 off a strong track season.
Inglemoor's girls finished 8th at state last year, led by Grace Ding, who took 13th individually off the back of a strong track season. The Vikings come into 2026 sitting 6th in thewashdrunner's 3A poll.
The boys side has its own name worth tracking: Sammy Connell finished 8th at state last season, and how the rest of that varsity squad looks coming out of summer training will say a lot about whether Inglemoor can build a program-wide result to match Connell's individual one.
Eastlake
Aubrey Wilems enters 2026 as the reigning 4A individual state champion — Eastlake's title hope starts with her.
Aubrey Wilems enters the season as the reigning 4A individual state champion — she ran 18:06.40 at Pasco as a sophomore, then added a state title on the track at 800m. She leads an Eastlake girls team that finished 6th at state last year, currently sitting 8th on the washdrunner board with an Honorable Mention from Doubleo. It's a gap worth watching: Wilems is the best individual runner in this field, full stop, but the team result around her hasn't caught up yet.
Mercer Island
Bella Heczey trains at the Youth Runner Fort Casey Running Camp. The Mercer Island sophomore finished 22nd at the 2025 WIAA 3A state championships as a freshman.
Mercer Island shows up on everyone's radar this year, and the girls and boys sides are telling two different stories.
The girls are ranked unanimously No. 1 in 3A by both polls, and the case for it is straightforward: four freshmen scored on last year's state championship team, and most of that group is back as sophomores. That's a program returning the bulk of its scoring lineup off a title — the kind of depth that makes "defending champions" more than just a headline.
The boys side is a different conversation. Mercer Island's title-winning boys team loses its top three scorers to graduation, including runners who finished 3rd and 4th individually at state. What's left is a genuine rebuild — not the top-to-bottom podium picture the girls side presents, even with the program still pulling a 5th-place ranking and an Honorable Mention in the preseason polls. Worth watching how quickly that squad finds its new identity.
Finn Bunker returns as a senior for Mercer Island — one of three scorers back from last year's state title team.
From meet-day coverage to a complete season archive — built for programs that want more than a few random shots on a coach's phone. Roster-based, course-positioned, and delivered fast enough to actually use.
See Program Coverage ↗Issaquah
Which brings us to Issaquah — the other powerhouse in this field, and the team I spent the most time digging into ahead of this race.
The Eagles return as the reigning 4A girls state champions, and the preseason polls have them at 3rd (washdrunner) and 1st (Doubleo) — Doubleo's writeup citing a squad that "returns 5 athletes from title team." On the boys side, Issaquah's presence is thinner: Nathaniel Laursen finished 35th at state last year, a solid mark but not enough yet to put the Issaquah boys on either preseason board beyond an Honorable Mention.
Lucy Jaeschke closes in on the finish at the WIAA state championships. The Issaquah runner placed 112th as a sophomore last season and returns as a junior in 2026.
I reached out to Issaquah head coach Liza Rickey ahead of the season to dig into what's driving that girls team, and her answers gave a real look at the program behind the ranking.
The leadership dynamic. Sally Davis returns as the team's obvious leader after finishing 22nd at state last year, with Emma Wurster right behind her at 19th — as a freshman. Asked how that dynamic works, and what having last year's top-two finishers both back does for the rest of the roster's confidence, Rickey didn't hesitate:
"Sally is an amazing and inclusive leader that encourages the entire girls' team. She deeply believes in all of her teammates, making the team better because of it. Sally's support has been a strength in Emma W's development. Emma W has learned a great deal during the year in our program and is excited to race alongside her entire team."
Issaquah head coach Liza Rickey leads a nutrition session at the Cascadia Running Camp in Port Gamble.
Rickey went further, calling this group "one of the most cohesive units we have seen in our tenure" — a team that balances hard work with the joy of the running community in a way she says is genuinely special.
The Anastasia Cohen story. Issaquah's roster includes athletes who come out of other events entirely, and Anastasia Cohen — a track jumper and short-relay athlete with no prior cross country background — is one of them. Rickey explained that Issaquah's XC coaching staff overlaps with the track program (Katie Brookshire co-heads sprints, Mike Cobb co-heads both XC and track), and the philosophy is to bring in any event athlete who isn't tied up with a fall sport. The result is a squad that includes sprinters, jumpers, and throwers, all training on differentiated workouts built around their specific needs — while still getting the full XC experience. "Anastasia is an amazing athlete and we are excited to have her join us this season," Rickey said.
How much scouting actually happens. For a program with a target on its back, I asked how much time Rickey spends studying the rest of the 4A field versus just managing her own team week to week. Her answer: not much of the former. "We have very little time for scouting. We focus on our team and our process," she said, noting that cross country is too dynamic a season to chase other programs' form in September. That changes once the postseason arrives — "we start to dig into other teams once the postseason hits" — but the in-season approach is built entirely around controlling what Issaquah can control, a discipline Rickey credits for the program's postseason track record.
The vacancies. Issaquah's title team wasn't just fast — it was tight, with seven scorers packed closely together. I'd assumed two graduating seniors left two open spots on varsity; Rickey corrected that on the record — it's actually three open spots, not two. Between returning veterans who put in real summer work and new talent that's joined the program, she's not treating it as a reload. "We are not worried about reloading; we're just excited to see what is next," she said, adding that fans will have to wait to see who claims those final varsity spots.
Every race this KingCo class field runs will answer a piece of that question — and a lot of others — well before anyone lines up in Pasco.
