Windham doesn’t quite have a home-course advantage yet, but the Jaguars now officially have a course to call home.

Though nearly all of the teams at the newly opened Windham High School are junior varsity, the school’s cross country team is competing at the varsity level.

On Sept. 22, the school hosted its first-ever Windham Invitational, with the girls grabbing sixth in the eight-team field and the boys finishing in eighth, including a 10th-place time of 19 minutes, 33 seconds from Colby Putnam.

Windham’s best finisher from the girls team was Kate Farrell with a time of 21:44.

“To host the first meet here and have as many teams as we did, it was an amazing day for Windham High School,” said the Jaguars girls head coach, Kate Jackson.

Merrimack Valley won the girls team event with a score of 29, while Bedford dominated among the boys thanks to four runners in the top five. The Bulldogs tallied a team score of 22.

Pelham also took part in the event, as the young Python teams finished sixth and seventh in the boys and girls races, respectively.

Pelham’s head coach, Todd Kress, said his teams were not running at full speed, however, opting to use the race as a training day for the Manchester Invitational, which was Saturday, Sept. 26.

Freshman Brandon Hannon had the best time for the Pythons, running the 5-kilometer course in 20:58, good for 36th among 122 racers.

“In this sport, regular-season standings don’t matter, so there are certain races that you point to as big races, with Manchester being one of those,” said Kress. “(The Windham Invitational) was really about building confidence and gearing up for our next race.”

Hannon was one of the runners who Kress said benefited from the confidence boost, as the freshman is normally the team’s No. 5 competitor, but was able to run with the top Pythons throughout the hilly course.

Ethan Ely came in four spots behind Hannon, while Erin Krawczyk crossed the finish line just 15 seconds later. Senior Emily Spognardi was the best finisher for the Lady Pythons, grabbing 14th place with a time of 22:53. Jaguars boys head coach Mick Grant said the program’s future is promising because of the current members of the team, plus the strength of the middle school program.

The mentor also expressed his excitement about the inaugural invitational.

“We have a beautiful school, and before the race a lot of the teams wanted tours. It was a lot of fun,” said Grant. “It was great to be able to show off to the schools in the division.”