The Redwood Mountain Biking team sped ahead of most of the competition in its first race of the year, placing highly but losing to its rival, Drake.

The team got third overall in the Folsom Granite Bay Challenge tournament on Feb. 24, placing them in third in the NorCal rankings.

According to senior Josie Nordrum, the team has been training for months in preparation for the beginning of the season.

“We’ve been training for this race since November, and I’ve been training for six months,” Nordrum said.

Nordrum also said the training paid off for her, helping her place second in the varsity girls’ category.

“These races are huge, with about 500 racers at the event, so a podium finish is definitely a good indicator for a team’s performance,” Nordrum said.

According to junior Grady Polisson, despite the team’s overall performance, some riders were not able to place as highly as they hoped.

“I don’t think we’ve done as well as a team in this race as we could have done and have done in the past,” Polisson said. “Some of our better riders had some mechanical and equipment problems, but we’re moving on from this race and stepping it up again.”

Polisson finished in 29th out of 33 racers in the varsity boys’ category after several chain slips forced him to stop and repair it.

Despite the problems that affected this first race, Polisson said he is hopeful that the team can beat Drake, which is currently placed one spot above Redwood in the NorCal rankings.

“I think we can probably beat Drake this year because of the fact that Drake graduated some of their fast riders, and we’re gaining more fast freshmen and sophomores,” Polisson said.

Polisson said that Drake Murphy is one of those fast sophomores contributing to the team’s success this year. Murphy placed third in the sophomore category at the Granite Bay race.

“This year, I’ve started to score for the team,” Murphy said. “If I can win in a race, that would definitely help us beat Drake.”

Murphy said that the team has an advantage over Drake because it has lost only one senior rider from last year.

“We were only a few points off from Drake last year, and we only lost one senior, so I think we might be able to pull it off this year and beat them,” he said.